
























































































































































































































































./ 


IRISH WIT AND HUM OR — Continued. 


JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 


His Birth. 

Curran as Punch’s Man. 
At a Debating Society. 
The Bank—Duel with St. 
Leger. 

The Monks of the Strew. 
Lord Avonmore. 

His first Client. 

Curran and the Infor¬ 
mer. 


Lord Clare. 

Curran’s Eloquence. 
Scene between Fitz- 
gibbon and Curran. 
Defence of Rowan. 
Encounter with a Fish- 
woman. 

Curran and Lord Erskine 
Duel with Bully Egan. 
Massy versus Head fort. 


The Serenading Lover. 
Employment of Infor¬ 
mers! 

Curran and the Farmer. 
Curran and the Judge. 
Quarrel with Fitzgibbon. 
High Authority. 

Red Tape—Curran and 
the Mastiff. 


FATHER O’LEARY. 


His Birth. 

Controversy with an Infi¬ 
del. 

Interview with Dr. Mann 
| Controversy with John 
Wesley. 

Meeting of O’Leary and 
Wesley. 

Dr. O’Leary and Father 
Callanan. 

O’Leary and the Qua¬ 
kers. 

His * Reception by the 
Volunteers. 


O’Learv and John 
O’Keefe. 

O’Leary and the Irish j 
Parliament. 

Hig Interview with Dan 
iel Danser. 

A Fop. 

His Person—Captain 

Rock. 

♦ Lots Drawn to Have Him 
at Dinner. 

Reply to Charge of Ke- 
cantation. 

O’Learv and the Rector. 

Lady Morgan. 


A Batch of Interesting 
Anecdotes. 

A Dog*s Religion. 
Howard and Mr. Henry 
Shears. 

His Habits of Study. 
Edmund Burke. 

His Chapity. 

O'Leary versus Curran. 
His Triumph over Dr. 
Johnson. 

A Nolle Prosequi. 

The Prince of Wales. 

The closing Scenes of his 
Life. 


DANIEL O’CONNELL. 



in him. 

A Young Judge Done. 
O’Connell and a Snarling 
Attorney. 

His Encounter with 
Biddy Moriarty. 
O’Connell and a Bilking 
Client. 

Sow-West and the Wigs, j 
Election and R’y Dinners 


Scene at Killiney. 

An Insolent Judge. 

A Witness Cajoled. 

His Duel with Captain 
D’Esterre. 

O’Connell and Secretary 
Goulburn. 

Entrapping a Witness. 
Gaining over a Jury. 
Baddy and the Parson. 

A Martial Judge. 


Retentive Memory. 

A Political Hurrah at a 
Funeral. 

Refusal of Office. 

A Mistaken Frenchman. 
Epistolary Bores. 

Sir R. Peel’s Opinion of 
O’Connell 

Anecdote of O’Connell’s 
Uncle. 

A Slight Rebuke. 


WHAT THE PRESS SA VS. 

“ Irish Wit and Humor” is the title of an agreeable and judicious selection of 
anecdotes, taken from the lives of the illustrious Irish Wits. Swift, Curran, 
O’Leary, and O’Connell. Dean Swift and Father O’Leary have the largest 
amount of space allowed to their sayings and doings. 11 gives its readers an excel¬ 
lent idea of the style of the Dean’s wit and humor. — Catholic Review. 

• k These anecdotes furnish a very excellent illustration of Irish wit and humor.” 
—Metropolitan Record. , 

iamo, 240 pages. Green Cloth, Bevelled. Gold and Ink Designs, with Portrait 
of Swift. Price One Dollar. 

J. A. McGEE, Publisher, 

7 Barclay Street, New York. 

































IRELAND 


AMONG THE NATIONS; 


THE FAULTS AND VIRTUES OF THE IRISH COM¬ 
PARED WITH THOSE OF OTHER RACES. 


REV. 


BY THE 


J. O’LEARY, 


D.D. 



New York : 

J. A. McGEE, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, 

7 BARCLAY STREET. 


THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

J. A. McGEE, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C. 



*> 


Am.- 


J. Ross & Co., Printers and Stereotypeks, 27 Rose St., N. Y, 










TO THE 


REV. THOMAS FARRELL, 

PASTOR OF ST. JOSEPH’S CHURCH, NEW YORK, 

THIS BOOK 

IS DEDICATED, AS A MARK OF RESPECT 

FOR 

HIS LONG, FAITHFUL, AND UNBLEMISHED CAREER AS A CATHO¬ 
LIC PRIEST | HIS LOVE OF TRUTH, RIGHT, AND JUS¬ 
TICE, AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN ; HIS BIG HEART 
AND BROAD HUMANITY FOR ALL RACES AS A 
MAN ; AND HIS UNIFORM GOODNESS AND 
KINDNESS TO ME AS MY OLD PASTOR, 

BY 

THE AUTHOR , 


J. O’LEARY 


I 

















































































PREFACE. 


HE object of this book is to place 
Ireland in her true liofht amone 
nations, and to awaken the rea¬ 
soning powers, and call forth the 
judgment of the Irish race, rather than to 
excite its fervor and indame its enthusiasm. 
I do not wish to abate the patriotism of the 
Irish race, or to impair its affection for the 
church ; but I am of opinion that a patriotism 
and religion founded on reason, appreciation, 
and judgment are built on a firmer founda¬ 
tion than sentiment, affection, and enthusiasm 
can supply. A true estimate of one’s self 
will lead to a correct estimate of others; and 
truth will always be a stronghold in war 
and a safeguard in peace. When the Irish 
people reflect what a small fragment they 
are of the human race, and when they under¬ 
stand their true position, and accurately calcu- 










VI 


Preface . 


late their power and influence, their move¬ 
ments and undertakings will be less subject 
to failure. 

On account of the limits of this book, and 
* the vast range of subject-matter to be travel¬ 
led over, I have not been able to do much 
more than state conclusions without inserting 
reasons or brinQfinof forward authorities. If 
my judgments are correct, and tend to make 
the Irish rational towards themselves, just 
towards others, and successful in the future ; 
if the chapters of this book stir up the man¬ 
hood, self-respect, and dignity of Irish readers; 
if the children of other races into whose hands 
it may come pronounce my opinions impartial 
and truthful; and if from its perusal a warmer 
love and deeper reverence be enkindled in 
the minds of Irish-Americans for the United 
States and American institutions, Ireland 
among the Nations will accomplish its ob¬ 
ject, and it will not repent me to have writ¬ 
ten it. J. O’L. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

ETHNOGRAPHY AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 

PAGE. 

The insignificance and perishable nature of man—The life and spirit of 
races—The aim of ethnography—Ethnography, biography, and 
geography—The formative elements of national character—The 
just test of national character—The study of ethnography leads to 
the sovereignty of God and the brotherhood of races, . . 11-19 


CHAPTER II. 

ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE EARLY DIVISIONS OF THE 

HUMAN RACE. 

The joys of paradise—The children of God and the children of men—The 
waves of the human family which flowed from the high table-lands 
of Aram or Irania—Four points on the globe which possessed a 
peculiar and isolated grandeur—Characteristics of Oriental 
nations and Western races—Unity of the human family, . . 20-24 


CHAPTER III. 

ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE VARIA TIONS OF RACES IN THE 

LAPSE OF AGES. 

The Jews and Christians—The Asiatic empires and the Roman Em¬ 
pire—Ireland and Byzantium—The Hebrew nation—The Christian 
peoples—The facilities for intercommunication between nations in 
our age—Evangelization of heathendom,.25-29 



Contents\ 


• • • 

vm 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE SCYTHIANS AND THE CELTS. 

PAGE, 

The inhabitants of Inner Asia—The account of Josephus—The descrip¬ 
tion of Ezechiel—Habits of the Scythians—Independence of the 
Scythians—What the Scythians have done for Europe—The Scy¬ 
thians and the Celts—Character of the Celts of Erin, . . 30-34 


CHAPTER V. 

THE HEBREWS. 

« 

The glories of God’s people—The obstinacy of Israel—The sinfulness 
of Israel—The pride of the Hebrews—Repudiation of the Hebrew 
republic and protests of the prophet Samuel—Disadvantages of 
monarchy—Restlessness of the Hebrews down to the republics of 
France and America—Comparison of the Hebrews and the 
Irish,.35-4X 


CHAPTER VI. 

ANCIENT ASIA. 

The magnificence and shame of Ancient Asia—Despotism and degrada¬ 
tion—Assyria and Ninive—The glories of Babylon—Description 
of the overthrow of Babylon—The rise of the Persians to power— 
The Persians and Celts—Despotism leads to desolation—The words 
of the Prophet Sophonias,.42-48 


CHAPTER VII. 

( THE GREEKS. 

Greece and the Orient—The influence of Greece upon the human 
race—The triumphs of Greece in the literary world—Grecian valor 
and Grecian writers—The Amphictyonic assemblies—Public meet¬ 
ings in Greece—Slavery in Greece—The downfall of Greece, . 49-54 




Contents , 


IX 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ROMANS. 

page; 

The high position of the Roman name among nations—Was the Roman 
Empire the result of military mechanism ?—Glory of the old Roman 
Empire—Grecian and Roman systems of warfare—The navy of 
Rome—Effects of Roman character and institutions—Character¬ 
istics of the old Romans—Vices of the old Romans—Downfall of 
the Roman Empire—A lesson for Ireland,.55-63 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE TEUTONS AND ANGLO-SAXONS. 

The situation of Germany and its central position—Relations with 
outside nations—Relations of the Saxon branch of the Teutonic 
race with the Caledonians and Hibernians—Grand results of Irish 
missionary labors—Germany garnering the harvest sown by Celtic 
and Saxon laborers,.64-66 


CHAPTER X. 

THE MOHAMMEDANS AND THE ARABS. 

• 

Arabia a land of independence—Mohammedanism alone seems to 
have left its footprints on Arabia’s sands—Success of Mohammed— 
Wide sweep of Mohammedan conquest—Causes which led to the 
triumphs of Mohammedanism—Elements which have led to the 
decay and will effect the downfall of Mohammedanism—Analogy 
between the Mohammedans and Israelites—The world-wide hu¬ 
manity of the Christian religion,.. 67-73 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE NORMAN AND THE DANE. 

The land of the Northman—Love of the Northman for conquest in the 
South—The triumph of Ireland over the Northman at Clontarf— 
The Norman settlement in Neustria, and the conquest of Eng¬ 
land—Return of the tide of Norman invasion into Ireland by 
another channel—Subjugation of Ireland,. 74 - 7 6 



X 


Contents . 


CHAPTER XII. 

MEDIAEVAL ITALIAN REPUBLICS. 

PAGE. 

The republics of Israel, Carthage, Athens, Sparta, Rome—Mediaeval 
republics at Florence, Genoa, Venice, Rome, and other Italian 
cities—Blessings from the Italian republics—The great men of 
Rome and Florence—Italian republics the aurora of a brighter 
light,. 77-79 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE BYZANTINE GREEKS. 

The grand and commanding position of Byzantium, or Constanti¬ 
nople—The advantages which Constantinople has conferred on the 
human race—Singular similarity between the fate of Ireland and 
the fate of Constantinople—The uprising of the Greek, and the 
downfall of the Turk,.80-82 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ENGLISHMAN A T HOME. 

The glory of the British Empire—The English are a proud, vain, haugh¬ 
ty, and insolent people—The English aristocracy—Characteristics of 
the English masses—The power of the English—Liberation of West 
Indian slaves by the English—Liberation of Saxon slaves by the 
Irish,.83-86 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD. 

The infamy which Englishmen abroad have stamped on tfceir country— 
Lawlessness of human passions—What is the British Empire ?— 
The testimony of Ireland—The testimony of America—The voices 
of India, Africa, and Oceanica—The British aristocracy, . 87-89 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE FRENCHMAN A T HOME. 

The Frenchman absorbed in France—France animated as one body— 
The homogeneity of France—France, a nation of principle— 
France, the friend of oppressed nationalities—The elasticity of 
France,.90-92 






Contents, 


xi 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE FRENCHM.A N A BROA D. 

PAGE. 

The characteristics of the Frenchman—The Frenchman in America, 
in Asia, and in Africa—Preponderance of English colonization— 
Civilization and patriotism of the French,. 93 - 94 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE GERMAN. 

Reawakening of Germany—Despotism of the German Empire—The 
Republic of France a lesson to Germany—Character of the 
German race—The Germans in America and their peculiarities— 
The German, the Irishman, and the American, .... 95-99 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE ITALIAN. 

What are the Italian’s traits of character?—What is his history?— 
What has the Italian done in the religious, social, and political 
world ?—What is the rank of Italy in science, history, philosophy, 
poetry, architecture, industry, and the fine arts ?—What are the 
relations of Italy and the Papacy ?.100-101 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE SPANIARD. 

Characteristics of the Spaniard—The three great wars of Spain—Spain 
in the days of her glory—Decline of Spain—Republics for the 
Latin races, despotisms for the Teutons,.102-103 


CHAPTER XXI. 

OTHER EUROPEAN RA CES. 

% 

The modern Greek—The Pole—The Hungarian—The Turk—The 
Danes and Scandinavians—The Swiss—The Russians, . . 104-105 


Contents . 


Xll 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE INHABITANTS OF ASIA. 

PAGE. 

The physical features of Asia—The races of Asia—The inland and 
maritime populations—Their characteristics—The religious ot 
Asia—The religion of Zoroaster—A hymn of Zoroaster—A prayer 
of Zoroaster—An invocation of Zoroaster—Thanksgiving of 
Zoroaster—A patet or confession of Zoroaster—The religion of 
Confucius and Lao-tse—The religion of Brahman—The four 
Vedas—The idea of caste— The religion of Buddha—The Dham- 
mapada on the doctrine of love, on moral virtues, on ignorance— 
The present condition and prospects of Asia, .... 106-115 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE INHABITANTS OF AFRICA —THE NEGRO , THE INDIAN , 

THE POLYNESIAN. 

Africa, the unknown land—Northern Africa—Western Africa— 
Kaffraria—Eastern and Central Africa—The Carthaginians and 
Egyptians—The glory of old Egypt—Description of Egyptian life 
from the tombs of Egypt—Astounding knowledge of the Ancient 
Egyptians—Enduring nature of Egyptian monuments—Rays of 
light shining on Africa—The African Negro, the Indian, and the 
Polynesian—Illustrations from Buddha—A grand field for Chris¬ 
tian missionaries,.116-123 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE SCOTCHMAN. 

Description of the Celt—The physical features of Scotland—The indepen¬ 
dence and glory of the Scotchman through ages—The Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal life of Scotland—The high culture of the Scotch—The oneness 
of the Scotch and Irish races—Resolutions of Bishop Keane and 
his clergy,.124-131 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IRISH RACE. 

Names and description of ancient Ireland—The people of Eri—The 
religious instinct of the Irish pagan people—Irish love of music 
and war—The hospitality of the Irish—Pagan Ireland illumined 




Contents , 


xm 


PAGE. 

with the light of faith—The foundations of Irish national life—The 
religion and nationality of Ireland—The elasticity of the Irish 
spirit—The assimilating powers of the Irish race—What religion 
has given to pationality—What Celtic nationality has imparted to 
religion—The Scotch and the Irish—The Celtic race and other 
races—Attributes of the Celtic race,.132-137 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE IRISH RA CE. 

What is the resurrection of the Irish or Celtic race ?—Ireland’s glory 
at home and abroad—The three woes of Ireland—Agencies of 
destruction—A scene of desolation in Connaught—Agencies of 
resistance—Favorable circumstances of expansion—The Irish race 
to-day with its emblems—Advice for the future: solidarity, 
organization, education, an independent and intelligent use of the 
ballot,.138-156 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE IRISH RACE ABROAD. 

Settled habits and homes of the Irish race—Great exodus of the Irish 
people at the beginning of our generation—The law of migra¬ 
tion—The Irish in England, Scotland, and Wales—The Irish in 
Canada and Australia—The Irish in the United States—Mistakes 
in the transplantation of the Irish race,.157-^62 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE FORMA TIVE ELEMENTS OF THE CA THOLIC CHURCH 
IN THE UNITED ST A TES. 

The formative elements found in the Episcopacy—Mr. Clarke’s book- 
importance of the subject—High standing of the British Empire in 
the world—Relative positions of Britain and France—Nationality of 
deceased American Catholic prelates—Seven national Catholic 
Churches founded by the Irish—Teachers of the Irish Catholic 
Church—Irish Catholic churches abroad—The Catholic Church in 
the United States—Its characteristics—The nationalities from 
which it has been built—The Fathers of the American Catholic 
Church—Bishops Brute, England, Carroll, Spalding ; Archbishops 
Kenrick and Hughes—Peace be with their spirits, . ... 163-174 



XIV 


Contents. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE AMERICAN. 

PAGE, 

How rapidly the American has assumed a national type of charac 
ter—The national characteristics of the American—The position of 
the Irish race in this country—The position of the German race— 
Their relative importance at present and in future—Remarks of an 
eminent Catholic priest to Irish-Americans on the rehabilitation of 
American natjonal life at the close of the late war, . . . 175-184 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 

What is destiny?—The physical features and natural advantages of 
America—Its influential situation between Europe and Asia— 

The cosmopolitanism of American institutions—The Constitution 
and the sects—The laws of the United States and the doctrines 
of the Catholic Church—The destiny of the Catholic Church—The 
destiny of the United States, and the destiny of the Irish race, 185-191 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

EDUCA TION AMONG RA CES. 

The Golden Ages of the world—The importance of education —A 
national intellect, a national will, a national memory, and a 
national imagination—The Italian—The Teutons—The French— 

The Irish and Scotch—The march of civilization through Asia, 
Greece, Rome, and the nations of Western Europe—Civilization 
in America—Ireland and the Irish race in the battle-field of civil¬ 
ization, . 192-201 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

COMPARATIVE SURVEY OF RACES. 

Ancient races, Scythians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Per¬ 
sians—Greeks and Romans -Teutons, Mohammedans, and North¬ 
men—Mediaeval Italian Republics and Byzantians—English, 
French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and other Europeans— 
The nations of modern Asia—Africans and Potynesians—Scotch 
and Irish, or the Celtic race—The American’s position stated in 
seven conclusions derived from the foregoing chapters, . 202-208 



IRELAND AMONG THE NATIONS. 




CHAPTER I. 

ETHNOGRAPHY AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 

S there a thinking man who has con¬ 
sidered himself and the countless 
myriads by‘whom he is surrounded, 
and has not wondered at his own 
insignificance? Has any one contemplated the 
unnumbered generations that have rolled away, 
as so many waves, into eternity, and not been 
awfully impressed with the lesson that he is a 
bubble on the surface of time, and that his life is 
an unreality? Who has studied the unerring and 
remorseless power with which each age forces its 
predecessor over the dark precipice of death, and 
has not mourned over the perishable nature of 
his being? From the dawn of creation, man has 
wrestled with time, death, and decay, and, in the 
unavailing struggle, has passed off a vanquished 
victim of their imperishable supremacy. The 
law of change is written in fiery letters upon the 











12 Ireland among the Nations, 

children of man, and the science of biography 
reveals nothing lasting, except a deathless spirit 
and the immortal handwriting of God engraven 
upon it. 

These undying elements assume less perishable 
forms in families, communities, tribes, nations, 
and races. A sameness of institutions, a oneness 
in language, a common origin, an identity of in¬ 
terests, and a similarity of passions, prejudices, 
and feelings, have welded vast multitudes into 
one homogeneous whole, sometimes under the 
name of a nation, sometimes under that of a race. 
And this mass has been made more solid by the 
pressure of a common government; yea, it has 
been sanctified by religion, and rendered seem¬ 
ingly indestructible by the traditions and expe¬ 
rience of ages. But the same overwhelming power 
which consigns the body of man to decomposition, 
and emancipates the spirit of man from the realms 
of space, asserts its irremovable dominion, and lifts 
up its resistless sceptre over laws and languages, 
nations and races, republics and empires. Na¬ 
tions with all their characteristics and beloncdnes 

o o 

have appeared in youth, and manhood, and old 
age; have been buried in infancy, in bloom, in 
longeval decrepitude ; have flourished for a period 
and disappeared, or have vanished after alternat¬ 
ing irregular periods of national strength and 


*3 


Ethnography and its Principles. 

V. 

feebleness. As the Deluge swept the surface of 
the earth, and in one place rolled it up into moun¬ 
tains, and in another left dark and dayless valleys 
and ravines, time has stormed over the human 
family, now uplifting races into mountains before 
the eyes of men, and now submerging them from 
the view of mankind. It is something both sad 
and grand to walk by the shore of the past, and 
gaze upon the wrecks of races and nations, where 
time hath stranded them with the violence of 
winds and waves. It is pleasing to see how, over 
the ruins of the past, the ocean of humanity, with 
renovated energy, keeps tiding on evermore. It 
is instructive to study how ruin has spread its 
black wings over some nations under the fairest 
skies, and how others have come forth from the 
darkest nights, chastened and invigorated by tri¬ 
bulations and dangers. 

And while the races of the human family roll 
before us from age to age like the restless waters 
of the seas, and in our own day are spread out 
to our view as the continents, countries, and 
islands of geography, it will be our task to in¬ 
vestigate their perishable and imperishable ele¬ 
ments ; to discover the sources of life, activity, 
and longevity; to find out the antidotes of decay, 
disintegration, and dissolution ; to balance their 
excellences and shortcomings ; and to weigh their 


14 Ireland among the Nations. 

relative claims and merits in impartial scales. 
The science of ethnography will show us races 
and nations in themselves, and how they have 
been ordered under political forms; will enquire 
into the countries they have inhabited, how they 
have been physically developed, how they have 
been clothed, how fed, how housed ; will examine 
how their manners and customs have been estab¬ 
lished, how their language and religions have 
been settled, what has been their intellectual, 
moral, and industrial expansion. And as no race 
.has existed in an absolutely isolated state, it will 
be our duty to determine how races have been 
related, how allied, how intermingled ; what has 
been their origin, what their migrations, what 
their history, what their distinguishing traits. 
There are two races that shall especially call our 
attention and exercise our judgment—the one 
ancient and still young, the other young and 
already ancient; the first the masters of an island, 
the second the lords of a continent. I mean the 
Irish people and the American nation. What is 
the character of the American nation, and what 
is its destiny ? What are the characteristics of 
the Irish race, , and in what rank does Ireland 
stand among the nations ? 

There are three sciences which have a very 
close affinity—biography, geography, ethnogra- 


Ethnography and its Principles. 


i.5 


phy. Biography treats of the individual, geogra 
phy of his home, ethnography of his nation and 
race. Thus biography and geography are sub- 
elements of ethnography. When the physical 
development, the clothes, food, and dwelling, the 
language and religion, the manners and customs, 
the intellectual, moral, and industrial expansion 
of the individual are common to his nation, his 
biography is an embryonic ethnography. And 
any geographical influences on the history of his 
life, arising from the maritime or inland position 
of his country, from a prevalence of mountains or 
of plains, of rivers and lakes, or of dese.ts and 
arid tracts, will leave a corresponding impress 
upon the ethnography of his nation and race. As 
individuals have distinct and diverse faculties and 
capabilities, virtues and failings, preferences, pas¬ 
sions and peculiarities, so have nations. Ihe 
individual character is the corner-stone of the 
national type. Do we wish to study a nation? 
Let us observe the individual ; the generalization 
and union of predominant . traits will give the 
ideal of the nation. Of course, it will be only an 
ideal, but we can ascribe to it spirit, life, action, 
will ; intelligence, and thought, and knowledge ; 
feelings, refinement, sympathy, and all the quali¬ 
ties of which a nation’s citizen is susceptible. 
And while a nation or a race, as an agglomerate 


16 


Ireland among the Nations. 


of units, is subject to decay and destruction like 
the human body, the union of spiritual endow¬ 
ments, which are the constituents of its soul, may 
be indissoluble and immortal, like the principle 
of life in man. Many nations have perished 
whose spirit is inherited to-day. 

In determining the character of a race, it will 
be useful to consider the formative causes by 
which it has been moulded. Whether it has been 
nurtured on inhospitable shores, and born and 
bred amid constant labors and innumerable dan¬ 
gers, as that of the American nation, or whether 
it has lolled in the lap of opulence and indolence, 
as those of oriental nations, will ever after tinge 
it with the strong light of energy or the dark 
shades of effeminacy. The traditions of an he¬ 
roic ancestry, the stirring records of a proud 
history, and the splendid inheritance of truth, 
principle, virtue, intelligence, and independence, 
have an indisputable efficacy on the spirit of a 
race. Slavery begets-lying; oppression, theft; 
intolerance, hypocrisy; exclusiveness, retrogres¬ 
sion. In fact, there is no effect without a cause; 
and, as Nature is positive in her gifts and endow¬ 
ments, there is no stain on a national character 
for which a reason does not exist. There are 
few men with natural deformities, and there are 
fewer national characters with inborn inconsrui- 

o 


Ethnography and its Principles . 17 

ties. A nation has for the most part suffered 
mutilation, contortion, or paralysis through the 
work of man. 

Sometimes causes which were once operative 
cease to exist, and the results which followed 
them on national characters disappear violently, 
gradually, or imperceptibly. This most frequently 
happens through wars, migrations, revolutions, 
and moral abasement. International intercom¬ 
munication in our day has a marvellous effect 
upon the several families of the human race. The 
welding and transforming powers of the con¬ 
quests of the human intellect over matter, and 
especially of steam and electricity, are almost in¬ 
calculable. There is a retroactive movement 
towards the unity of the human race, which was 
broken and splintered by the barriers of moun¬ 
tains and waters and by the inhumanity of man 
as much as by the confusion of languages. 

As it is, we must take national characters in 
the aggregate, and judge justly, standing on a 
cosmopolitan platform, uninfluenced by preju¬ 
dice, and undismayed in the assertion of truth 
and justice. As no man is without faults, and 
he who has least is best, so no national character 
is without blurs, blotches, or freckles; and where 
I shall find fewest, I shall give most praise. I 
shall respect the feelings of all men for their 


18 Ireland among the A T ations. 

o 

government, language, and religion; for their 
country and history; for their laws, institutions, 
customs, and civilization ; but it will not be in my 
power to give unqualified praise to any nation or 
race that has hitherto existed under the sun. 
Some races excel in some respects; others in 
other respects. All men are not born giants, 
poets, astronomers, orators, mathematicians; nor 
has any nation yet appeared shining with the 
fulness of perfections. The bravest races have 
been the justest ; the most intellectual, the most 
merciful; the most laborious, the most bountiful; 
the most voluptuous, the most cruel, cowardly, 
and inhumane. Yet in no race, or people, or 
nation have the rays of the Divinity been so ex¬ 
tinguished that religion, and justice, and human¬ 
ity may not, by contact or impact, communicate 
to them activity and life. 

As the study of families and communities leads 
to the examination of races and nations, so inves¬ 
tigations on national families will conduct to God, 
their great Father, who is the Lord of popula¬ 
tions. Under His eye, nations and races advance 
and recede; are allied, and intermingled, and 
isolated ; are born, and perish. The great Ruler, 
who has divided the waters of the earth into 
oceans, and rivers, and lakes, and assigned them 
their laws, has laid down boundaries for the races 


Ethnography a?id its Principles. 


l 9 


of men, and appointed them their times of wan¬ 
dering and their abodes of resting. While we 
are rolled on to eternity in the race to which we 
belong, like atoms in an ocean, we should lift 
our eye$ to the Father of races, who is a con¬ 
stant sun pouring down his light upon us, and 
follow what we see highest, purest, most holy, 
and most heavenly in all races, nations, tribes, 
systems, languages, and ages. Would that the 
whole human family were one in truth, justice, 
and humanity; beautiful in peace, joyful in hope ; 
and would roll with united ocean power into 
eternity, unto the bosom of its Father, never 
more to suffer disunion or disintegration ! For 
this the church was founded, and for this Christ 
died. 


CHAPTER II. 


ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE EARLY DIVISIONS OF 

THE HUMAN RACE. 

OMEWHERE under the clear skies 
of Southwestern Asia, on the banks 
of the Tigris and Euphrates, God 
planted a paradise of pleasure. In 
it He placed the germ of the human family, in 
the persons of two healthy, happy, and immortal 
vegetarians called Adam and Eve. There was 
nothing to glad the eye, or charm the senses, or 
shed joy on the human heart which His bounti¬ 
ful providence did not lavish on them. They 
enjoyed the aroma of the sweetest flowers; they 
banqueted on the choicest fruits; they held con¬ 
verse with God and His ministering angels; and 
their life was one of love, and peace, and endless 
bliss, and untold pleasures. But falling from 
their high estate, they forfeited their immortality, 
and brought death into the world, with its innu¬ 
merable train of woes. How the protoparents 
were degraded; how they were exiled from 
Eden; how there was fratricide; how their pos¬ 
terity were divided into the children of God and 




Early Divisions. 


21 


the children of men; how the union of the chil¬ 
dren of light and the children of men begot 
giants ; how those giants lived, and warred, and 
were multiplied, has been dimly and obscurely 
limned in the poetry, traditions, and histories of 
many nations. The nations of the West look to the 
East for the original abodes of their ancestors, 
and the peoples of the far East point westward 
to the primeval habitations of their forefathers. 
Outside of the fictions, poetic fancies, and philo¬ 
sophical speculations, which trace a dark and far 
distant connection with the Adamite period of 
the human race, the antediluvian division of men 
is without influence on mankind as at present 
constituted. 

On the high table-lands of Aram, Armenia, or 
Irania, where the ark of Noe rested, we find the 
water-sheds of the human race. The lofty moun¬ 
tain ranges from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic 
Ocean and the Bay of Bengal seem to have di¬ 
vided the races of men as the backbone does the 
human body. The successive waves of migration 
followed the rising and the setting sun in oppo¬ 
site directions from Ararat. The current west¬ 
ward was divided into three streams, of which the 
first, running southwest, was broken by the Red 
Sea, and spread abroad over Africa and Arabia; 
the second passed along the southern shore of the 


22 Ireland among the Nations . 

Black Sea, and occupied the peninsulas on the 
northern coast of the Mediterranean ; and the 
third was poured out from the highlands between 
the Black and Caspian Seas over the steppes of 
Sarmatia. Eastward from Ararat flowed a vast 
wave of the human family along the southern 
peninsulas of Asia—that is, Eastern Arabia, Hin- 
dostan, and Malaya—while immense multitudes 
must have passed from the plateau of Iran towards 
the eastern shores of Asia, as well as by the Sea 
of Aral along the lowlands east of the Ural 
Mountains, towards the sources of the great 
rivers which disembogue into the Arctic Ocean. 
The continent of America and the multitudin¬ 
ous isles of the Pacific Ocean seem to have been 
originally peopled by the westerly and easterly 
onflow of the human family. We find that the 
physical conformations of the African, Mongolian, 
and Polynesian have a close affinity, while that 
of the native American approaches to the Cau¬ 
casian. 

On the whole, the tide of the human family 
seems to have been along the temperate zone. 
But there were four points that possessed a pecu¬ 
liar and isolated grandeur: the far West, where 
the sun reposed ; the orient, where his rays first 
shone ; the torrid regions, where his rays were 
fiercest; and the cold North, where his influence 


Early Divisions . 


23 


was almost unknown. Poets of Western nations 
placed the homes of the blessed in some lands 
west of Europe; the songs of the Orientals were 
enlivened with the fairy-lands of a far-away, happy 
Orient. There is something sad in the history 
of those tribes who have struggled with the fiery 
heats of the South, and approached the lands 
where human life was supposed to become ex¬ 
tinct through the scorching and unendurable 
nature of the temperature ; and there is some¬ 
thing sombre in those hardy peoples whose ener¬ 
gies have battled with the cold, and whose homes 
have been free in their icy isolation. 

The nations which travelled eastward from 
Irania have been endowed with patient and abid¬ 
ing natures, imbued with a wonderfully tenacious 
conservatism, and gifted with fine and almost 
microscopic perceptions. The races whose course 
was westward were bold, resolute, and energetic. 
Insatiable in their ambitions and acquisitions, 
they despised what they had acquired, and ever 
yearned for more. Towards the East, the memory 
appears to have been developed at the expense 
of the intellect, while the intelligence of Western 
nations has been led by the imagination rather 
than recollection. Thus it has come to pass that 
Oriental religions and civilizations have lasted 
through thousands of years, while Western reli- 


24 Ireland among the Nations . 


gions and civilizations have perished or changed 
within almost as many hundreds. 

Notwithstanding the changes which have ta¬ 
ken place since God placed Adam and Eve in 
Paradise, and the myriad causes that have been 
working since the posterity of Noe scattered 
abroad over the earth, from the highlands of 
Aram away into all lands and climes, there is 
no intrinsic difference so great, no variations so 
strange, among all the races of men, as to destroy 
the unity of the human family. The stricter the 
inyestigation, the more evident will be the con¬ 
clusion that all races originally were one, and 
should now be one, in humanity towards one 
another and praise to the Great Father who has 
given them the whole earth for an inheritance. 


CHAPTER III. 


ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE VARIATIONS OF RACES 
IN THE LAPSE OF AGES. 

N the history of mankind, God’s people 
has always held the most important 
position. Before the coming.of Christ, 
the Jews must be considered the most 
prominent people of the world ; and, since the 
delivery of the new Revelation to the world, their 
grand privileges have been inherited by Christian 
nations. Outside of the Hebrew and Christian 
people, there existed nations and empires, with 
great natural virtues, unbounded sway, and 
unparallelled wealth and magnificence ; yet they 
seem to have flourished solely for the purpose of 
facilitating the accomplishment of the destinies 
of God’s chosen people. The great Asiatic em¬ 
pires of antiquity, and the marauding kingdoms 
conterminous with Palestine, were at times a 
scourge, at times an annoyance, and at times an 
instrument of glory ip God’s dealings with the 
Jews. The Roman Empire expedited the pro¬ 
mulgation of Christianity to the .whole world ; 
and the barbarian hordes of the North were the 










26 Ireland among the Nations . 

means of planting the Christian religion in Eu¬ 
rope, amidst a new society of nations, on the 
ruins of what had passed away. Ireland and 
Byzantium, at opposite ends of the continent, 
the one secure by its encircling belt of ocean, the 
other by its fortified and naturally impregnable 
location, seem to have had especial missions in 
connection with the Christian church. With the 
going down of the Roman Empire, in the fifth 
century, the star of Ireland rose, and continued 
to shed light to the beginning of the ninth era of 
the church ; but when the light of faith and learn¬ 
ing had been relit on the Continent in the days of 
Charlemagne, the Danes and Northmen well-nigh 
extinguished it on the Island of Saints and Scho¬ 
lars. After the Byzantine Empire had opposed 
the spread of Mohammedanism, and delivered 
over the surviving treasures of ancient civilization 
to the returning Crusaders, Constantinople went 
down before the arms of the Mussulman, and the 
crescent was planted on the church of St. Sophia. 

Through the long period of its existence as a 
nation, spreading over nearly two thousand years—• 
that is, from the going down of Jacob into Egypt 
to the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus—Israel 
occupied a singular and extraordinary relation¬ 
ship to the human family. Being the depositary 
of GodV truth, and the vessel of election, it lived 


The Variations of Races. 


27 


for mankind, but did not mingle with men, since 
intercourse was contamination and disaster. The 
strength of Israel lay in its obedience to the law 
of Moses, and seemed to grow in proportion to its 
narrowness and isolation. It is wonderful how 
nations, empires, races, and religions changed and 
drifted, like a sea of sand, according as Jehovah 
loved, hated, or was jealous of Israel, the nation 
which he had chosen to be his spouse. The 
House of Jacob was the axis around which all 
the destinies of ancient heathendom revolved. 

On the other hand, the strength of the new 
Israel, the Christian church, lay in its catholicity. 
Being spread over the whole world, it might, like 
the ocean, retire at points, only to make encroach¬ 
ments elsewhere ; but at all times since its birth, 
it has throbbed through the human race with 
ocean pulse and with unimpaired universality. 
The Mosaic dispensation was the corner-stone of 
Israel in Asia, the land of Shem ; the covenant 
of Christ was the foundation of the new Israel in 
Europe, the land of Japheth. As the destinies 
of Asiatic races circled round the Israel of Moses, 
so the Israel of Christ seems to have been the 
touchstone of the destinies of European peoples. 
The heathenish races, contemporaries of imperial 
Rome, melted away,'leaving the church in youth 
and vigor ; and a new offspring of races was born 


28 


Ireland among the Nations . 


from her intercourse with the barbarian conquer¬ 
ors of the North, whose descendants rule the 
world in our day. The tendency of the church is to 
break down the wall of separation between nation 
and nation, between race and race, and to consoli¬ 
date the human family, not by brutal force, after 
the fashion of the old Romans, but by the weld¬ 
ing and assimilating influences of love, humanity, 
and enlightenment. When all tongues, and tribes, 
and races shall acknowledge a common Saviour 
and be members of the same church, then man¬ 
kind shall be a body of which Christ shall be 
the head ; and if any member glory, all the 
members shall glory with it; and if any member 
suffer, all the members shall suffer with it, because 
the charity of Christ quickens, animates, and im¬ 
pels the whole frame. Why should the inhabi¬ 
tants of Teheran or Patagonia put*on sack-cloth 
and ashes, and fall victims to starvation, while the 
granaries of Chicago and Odessa are groaning with 
grain? Why should the nations of Asia and 
Africa walk in the ways of error, ignorance, and 
misery, while there is the light of religion, civiliza¬ 
tion, and happiness in Europe and America ? 

Our age is remarkable for the subjugation of 
matter to mind, and for*- the facilities of inter¬ 
communication. Manual labor has been super¬ 
seded by inventions, matter being made to work 


29 


The Variations of Races. 

on matter, and the power of steam has conquered 
distance, whether on land or sea. Nation speaks 
to nation, and, by means of the telegraph and 
the press, holds converse and discussion on the 
rights and destinies of men and races. Never 
since the foundation of the world has truth had 
such facilities for propagation, and humanity such 
opportunities to assert its sway. Let us hope the 
Church of Christ will push its triumphs over the 
yet unconquered territories of the globe, and that 
tyrants who have sat like a nightmare on popula¬ 
tions will open their eyes to acknowledge the 
inalienable rights of mankind. Let us hope that 
the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, and the 
press are the keys to unlock the gates of light 
for the myriads of heathen Asia and Africa. Let 
us hope that, in the roll and rumble of races, our 
own Irish nation will push forward with a noble 
rivalry of the American people, as the champion 
of truth, justice, religion, civilization, and hu¬ 
manity. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SCYTHIANS AND THE CELTS. 

HERE is something dismal and unde¬ 
fined about the history of the people 
which originally settled in the lands 
north of the Black and Caspian Seas, 
and whose ramifications indefinitely penetrated 
the heart of inner Asia. As the unknown and 
the exaggerated are closely allied, the imagina¬ 
tions of surrounding peoples have drawn the most 
monstrous pictures of this wild, brutal, and daring 
race, descended from Magog, the son of Japheth, 
to which the name Scythians, a general term for 
savages, has been applied. Josephus says they 
delighted in murder, and differed little from wild 
beasts. Their ferocity, drunkenness, and anger 
were well known to the Hebrews and the Greeks, 
and made them a terrible enemy. The prophet 
Ezechiel gives a horrific description of this people. 
The Lord puts a bit in its jaws, and brings forth 
all its army, horses, and horsemen, all clothed 
with mail, armed with shields, and spears, and 
swords. The Lord judges it with pestilence, and 
with blood, and with violent rain, and with vast 







3i 


The Scythians and the Celts . 

i 

T s 

hailstones, and rains down fire and brimstone upon 
the whole army. The Lord calls Israel to set on 
fire its weapons, its shields, its spears, its bows 
and arrows, its hand-staves, and its pikes. The 
Lord assembles the birds of the air and the beasts 
of the field to banquet on this Scythian victim 
which he prepares for them, to eat flesh and to 
drink blood, to grow fat and be full and be drunk 
with the blood of horses, and mighty horsemen, 
and men of war. Jeremias in a vision sees the 
Scythians coming from the north as a lion from 
his den, and calls them the robber of nations, a 
cruel people without mercy, armed with arrows 
and shields, mounted upon horses, warriors whose 
voices are like the roar of the sea. The Scythians 
led a nomadic life, and were ruled by savage kings 
or chiefs, to whom they paid great honors. They 
have been described as eating human flesh, drink¬ 
ing human blood, and using human skulls as 
drinking-cups. Dressed in the skins of beasts, 
having no towns or villages, worshipping the gods 
of war, lust, and adventure, they were known 
from the earliest antiquity as a brave, fearless, 
and independent people. 

The Scythians originally settled by the Caspian 
and Black Seas, spread eastward over the vast, 
sandy plains of Asia, and westward across the 
immense steppes of Russia, under the name of 


32 Ireland among the Hat ions. 

Sarmatians. A few years anterior to the taking 
of Jerusalem by Nebuchodonosor, about 600 B.C., 
the Scythians passed through Palestine into 
Egypt, and are said to have founded the city of 
Scythopolis. The greatest conquerors of anti¬ 
quity, such as Cyrus, Darius, and Alexander, 
attempted to subdue the Scythians, and failed. 
Their descendants, under different names, over¬ 
flooded and submerged the Roman Empire in 
after-ages; and from the lands once peopled by 
them came forth in still later ages the monster 
hordes that followed the leadership of Zenghis 
Khan and Tamerlane. The name of the Scyth¬ 
ians disappears from history about the seventh 
century, but it has been the parent stock of the 
races which peopled central Eu'rope and Asia. 

Though the Scythians have been set down as a 
savage nation, ignorant of laws except the will of 
leaders, rude in manners, and without cultivation 
in its dialects, it has given hardy, healthy, and 
valorous races to Europe, and, as a parent stock 
of huge populations, deserves the consideration 
of mankind. When Asiatic luxury and effemi¬ 
nacy had abased Roman intelligence, and cor¬ 
rupted Roman purity, and undermined Roman 
integrity, the descendants of the Scythians, in 
their careers of conquests, imported into Europe 
young, fresh brains, and built up a renovated so- 


The Scythians and the Celts. 33 

ciely. One offshoot of the Scythian family was 
the Celtic race in Ireland, whether it reached 
that island by Egypt and Spain—an allusion, 
perhaps, to the expedition of the Scythians 
under Psammeticus into Egypt—or whether it 
travelled over the main-land through Gaul and 
Britain into Scotia. 

There are, we confess, points of resemblance 
between the Scythians and Celts. They seem to 
have had the same passion for war, to have used 
similar weapons, and to have been alike suscepti¬ 
ble of the impulses for danger and adventure. It 
is certain that the Celts were never stained with 
the savage cruelty, brutal ferocity, and inhuman 
customs which have been ascribed to the Scyth¬ 
ians. Some writers have described the Scythians 
as a people of great moderation, eminent purity, 
and unstained character. They are said to have 
lived on diet prepared with milk, and to have 
been exceedingly just and religious. It may be 
that a wave of the Scythian family with those 
attributes passed westward and became the proto¬ 
parent of the Celts in Gaul, Spain, Britain, and 
Scotia. The sublime pantheism in religion, the 
patriarchal simplicity in manners, and the high 
degree of civilization which existed among the 
Celts could scarcely be set down as characteris¬ 
tics of the descendants of ruthless savages not 


34 Ireland among the Nations. 

far removed from the condition of wild beasts. 
Yet there is abundant historical authority to 
show that government, organized society, obe¬ 
dience to law, and great excellence in poetry, 
music, and learning flourished among the Celts. 
They had, moreover, schools, towns, splendid resi¬ 
dences, temples, regular organization for war, ex¬ 
tensive commerce, with many other indubitable 
indications of a high and far-advanced civilization. 
In no place did the original stream of the Celtic 
family remain so long unpolluted as in Scotia— 
that is, Abania and Erin—and nowhere was there 
a nearer approach to the sublime doctrines of 
Christianity than in the lives, laws, and society 
of the Scotico-Celtic descendants of the Scyth¬ 
ians. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE HEBREWS. 

OD’S people ! What an inspiring name ! 
Theirs was the adoption as of chil¬ 
dren. To them belonged the land 
which Jehovah loved, for which he 
worked manifold miracles, and in the possession 
of which he placed them. Theirs was the sacred 
city, the habitation which the Lord chose for 
himself—Jerusalem ! To them belonged the pro¬ 
phets, their inspiration, and an inheritance which 
they left them of the future, not of the past—an 
inheritance of things that were to be. O Jerusa¬ 
lem ! thine was the glory, thine were the kings ac¬ 
cording to God’s heart, and thine were the bones 
of the saints ! O Jerusalem ! thou wert the child 
of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, of David, 
and Josias, and Jehosaphat ! The promises, 
and the sprinkling of blood, and the covenant, 
and the mighty works of the God of Israel were 
for thee ! Had it been heard from ages that the 
children of a nation could lift its eyes to heaven 
and speak to the God of the living as its temporal 
king? To whom was it given that the children 





36 Ireland among the Nations. 

of men should act immediately under the light 
of God’s- face without the interposition of the 
dark shadows of human authority? Thine was 
glory, thine was power, and thine was close con¬ 
verse with the heart of the Lord of the universe. 
Yes, more—thine was the promise ! The mystery 
which was hidden from generations and empires, 
which St. Paul was the first to manifest to the 
powers in the high places of heaven, was thine by 
inheritance, and thine by fulfilment. God’s peo¬ 
ple ! For you Christ wept, and for you St. Paul 
wished to be an anathema. Had you known the 
Lord of glory, as a mighty man of your nation, 
your religion, and your blood declared, you would 
never have crucified Him. What was poverty to 
you was riches to us ; what was exile to you was 
adoption to us ; what was shame to you was our 
glory! 

From the first, O Israel! thou wert a stiff¬ 
necked people, and loath to bear the yoke of 
the Lord. As the teachers of truth, I believe 
you. As the children of Abraham, and Isaac, 
and Jacob, and the chosen ones of the living and 
Almighty Lord, I am proud to be your spiritual 
child. As the forsaken of Jehovah, I mourn for 
you. As the persecuted of nations, I wish to de¬ 
fend and befriend you. 

Where were thy faults? In sin and rebellion. 


The Hebrews. 


37 


Who has not sinned? Who has not rebelled? 
If Joseph was sold into Egypt, and if Joseph, by 
subjecting the Egyptians with houses, lands, 
liberties, and individualities, to Pharao taught an 
Egyptian how to oppress his own people, was it 
wonderful that a Pharao arose who knew not Jo¬ 
seph, but pursued his policy to the detriment of 
God’s people ? Merciful is the heart of the 
Most High; for he sent his servant Moses to set 
his people free in power, in wisdom, and in mar- 
vels..for all generations. Was not Moses faithful 
in the house of God ? He left his people safe by 
the banks of the Jordan, and passed away in 
glory from Nebo’s lonely mountain. Was Josue, 
the son of Nun, faithful in the house of God? 
Was Josue or his people ever punished for con¬ 
ciliation with those that bowed down before the 
God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob? Had 
the people of Canaan received the people of God, 
would the Lord have commanded extermination ? 
Did God destroy the penitential Ninivites? But 
as charity begets charity, so cruelty begets cru¬ 
elty ; and the unconverted, undestroyed, and per¬ 
secuted remnants of the seven nations originally 
doomed to annihilation remained evermore a woe 
unto Israel. 

Of all the faults of Juda and Jerusalem, the 
greatest were pride and thoughtlessness. Elated 


38 Ireland among the Nations. 

by success and weighed down by disaster, they 
were ready to cry out hosannah to Jehovah or to 
Beelzebub. Possessing a proud consciousness 
that they were the children of God, they dared 
to blaspheme when a people less proud would 
have put on sackcloth and ashes. And, further¬ 
more, the more outtopping was their haughtiness, 
the baser and more despicable were their abase¬ 
ment and prostration. They lacked the inward 
consciousness of manhood, though they could 
never lose the tenaciousness of disdain. With 
this ill-sustained conceit of the Hebrew nation 
was linked- a gross and material selfishness. 
Wherever Moses had allowed them a loop-hole 
to make money ; wherever Moses granted them 
authority over their own fellow-citizens, the chil¬ 
dren of God and their own coequals; wherever 
Moses had allowed them to pursue the policy of 
Joseph in Egypt towards foreigners, they hesi¬ 
tated not to gratify their cupidity, their am¬ 
bition, and their inhumanity. Who is proud, 
and thoughtless, and selfish without being an 
alien from Almighty God ! The splendid gov¬ 
ernment which the kind heart of Jehovah gave 
his people, whereby every man was his own 
interpreter of the Mosaic law, and was re¬ 
sponsible for his external acts only, and that 
before a council of the elders of his people—not 


The Hebrews. 


39 


in star-chamber, but at the gates before the peo¬ 
ple—was, alas ! discarded by this fickle nation. 
The holy Samuel went into a quasi-rebellion 
against Jehovah before he assented to the su¬ 
perimposition of a king. The command of God 
silenced him, saying: “ Samuel, they have re¬ 
belled, not against you, but against me. Give 
them a king." Even afterwards Samuel mourned 
before the assembled tribes of Jacob over the 
unutterable calamities which his countrymen 
had called down on themselves in discarding 
Jehovah’s republican form of government. The 
woes pronounced by Samuel fell on Israel. 

Did not the Hebrews have a plenitude of laws 
without demanding the enactments of a kingly, 
that is, a human authority? Removed so far 
from the Israelites in space, distant from them 
by such a vast gulf in time, incapable of appre¬ 
ciating their circumstances, and destitute of the 
materials to lay down the data for a correct con¬ 
clusion, we find it difficult from a human point 
of view to pass judgment on the Mosaic legisla¬ 
tion. It is surely comprehensive in scope and 
far-reaching in details. Its underlying idea is 
divinely constituted authority; and it may be 
safely asserted that its several enactments have 
withstood the strictest scrutiny of geneiations 
and races. It was wise and holy for its people 


40 


Irela?ici among the Nations. 


and its time ; but we have testimony that it was 
grossly misinterpreted after the lapse of thousands 
of years by Christian denominations, and notably 
by Cromwell in Ireland. We hope no age shall 
witness it evermore. 

But in all the sad and checkered history of 
God’s people, who is there to-day that does not 
feel for them ? It is a strange fact that, since the 
days the Hebrews set aside the republic of 
God against the protest of the prophet Samuel, 
they never found breathing-time till the Repub¬ 
lic of France, and they never found rest till 
their advent in the Republic of America, which 
is now embedded amidst the nations of the world 
as an island in the ocean. Tribulation has been 
the part of the sons of Abraham according to the 
flesh ; and shame on the Christians who persecuted 
the people of their Redeemer ! 

To-day we see the Hebrews scattered the world 
over, in all climes, among all races, subjects of 
every government, and speaking, not the sacred 
language of Jerusalem, but the tongues of all the 
tribes under the sun. Who is like to them ? .The 
Irish race, God’s chosen people under the new 
dispensation, the new Israel of the New Testa¬ 
ment ! Were the Hebrews an ancient race ? So 
are the Irish. Were the Hebrews a persecuted 
race? So are the Irish. Were the Hebrews 


The Hebrews . ? 41 

exiled from fatherland for faith? So were the 
Irish. Did the Hebrews suffer martyrdom by 
land and sea, in deserts, and mountains, and 
caves, at the hands of false friends and open 
enemies ? So did the Irish. Have the He¬ 
brews been scattered among the nations of the 
earth, from the rising to the setting sun, for the 
cause of old Israel ? Yes. And have not the 
Irish borne testimony to the new Israel over 
oceans and continents ? Have not the He¬ 
brews -found rest and liberty and recognition 
of their manhood on this continent after thou¬ 
sands of years of persecution, injustice, and 
degradation ? So have the Irish. May God’s 
people of both Testaments prove themselves 
worthy of this great and good republic, and 
may a happy destiny await them and it in 
the future ! 


CHAPTER VI. 


ANCIENT ASIA. 

HE name of ancient Asia awakens in 
the mind a feeling of the gigantesque. 
and the fabulously grand. We gaze 
back through the vista of thousands 
of years with mingled wonder and incredulity at 
the huge realms which existed on this empire- 
continent ; and, while we are bewildered at their 
grandeurs and glories, we recoil from the folly, 
shame, and degradation which they present. 
The human family seemed to exist to humor 
the caprice of some ruler or conqueror who had 
arrogated to himself the right of the human race. 
The toils, the lives, the properties, and the con¬ 
sciences of men were his playthings. Whole 
populations were drawn from their homes to 
make a wide Calvary at his pleasure, or wearied, 
and sickened, and died in building immense works 
to satisfy his vanity. Together with the pomp 
and magnificence of battles, banquets, and tri¬ 
umphs for kings and conquerors, comes from the 
long-buried past of Asia the wail of the widow. 








Ancient Asia. 


43 


the sigh of the captive, the groan of the slave, 
the ^mourning of the orphan and the oppressed, 
the million multitude of human woes sounding 
like the roar of many waters. It is sad to think 
how kings and tyrants took away from the world 
the light of truth, the voice of gladness, and the 
joys of life ; how men were brutalized, and made 
at once idolaters and slaves ; how the millions ex¬ 
isted to pander to the follies and passions of the 
few. 

What compensation were the splendors of 
Ninive and Babylon for the miseries on which 
they were built ? — ruined homes, slaughtered 
myriads, plundered provinces, and degraded hu¬ 
manity ! The government of Assyria was never 
a centralized authority, such as afterwards existed 
in Persia, and still more in Rome, but was a union 
of kings or chiefs who paid homage and tribute 
to the great king. The Assyrians worshipped 
thirteen great gods, the chief of whom was 
Asshur, the deified founder of their nations, 
and a number of minor divinities. Their reli¬ 
gion was a sensual and degrading polytheism. 
They seem to have made great advances in the 
arts and civilization, as was shown in the two 
magnificent cities which they built. It is said 
that Ninive was a quadrangle, seventeen and 
three-fourth miles by eleven and a quarter—that 


44 


Ireland among the Nations . 


is, sixty miles in circuit—was encompassed by 
walls one hundred feet high, broad enough on 
top for three chariots to drive abreast; and was 
defended by fifteen hundred towers, each two 
hundred feet high. Babylon was built on both 
banks of the Euphrates in the form of an im¬ 
mense square. Its circuit, defended by immense 
walls and towers, was fifty-six miles ; so that, cov¬ 
ering an area of about two hundred square miles, 
and being densely peopled, it would be about 
seven times the size of the city of London. The 
great palace of Nabuchodonosor was surrounded 
by a triple enceinte of walls, the outermost being 
seven miles round, the middle four and a half, 
and the innermost two and a half. These walls 
were three hundred feet high, and guarded by 
towers four hundred and twenty feet in height. 
This palace was connected with another less am¬ 
ple, situate on the opposite side of the Euphrates, 
by a stone bridge three thousand feet long, and by 
a tunnel. The hanging gardens, which were ele¬ 
vated to a great height, and were planted with all 
kinds of* trees and plants, were squares sixteen 
hundred feet in circuit. The Euphrates was lined 
with brazen gates to close the streets, which were 
laid out in straight lines, and cut each other at 
right angles. There were, besides, temples, tow¬ 
ers, statues, engravings, paintings, and innumera- 


Ancient Asia. 


45 


ble other works with the same amazing propor¬ 
tions. No wonder that the king of this city, who 
was able to set up a statue of gold one hundred 
and five feet high by ten and a half wide, should 
exclaim, “ Is not this the great Babylon, which I 
have built to be the seat of the kingdom, by the 
strength of my power and in the glory of my ex¬ 
cellence!” The history of the fall of this mighty 
city of antiquity is interesting, and is well given 
by Rawlinson from Herodotus. When Cyrus 
(b.c. 538) had made all necessary preparations 
for turning the waters of the Euphrates, so that 
his soldiers might enter the city by its bed, “ he 
determined to wait for the arrival of a certain fes¬ 
tival, during which the whole population were 
wont to engage in drinking and revelling, and 
then silently, in the dead of night, to turn the 
water of the river, and make his attack. All, fell 
out as he hoped and wished. The festival was 
held with even greater pomp and splendor than 
usual; for Baltazar, with the natural insolence 
of youth, to mark his contempt for the besieging 
army, abandoned himself wholly to the delights 
of the season, and himself entertained a thousand 
lords at his palace. Elsewhere, the rest of the 
population was occupied in feasting and dancing. 
Drunken riot and mad excitement held possession 
of the town ; the siege was forgotten; ordinary 


46 Ireland among the Nations. 


precautions were neglected. Following the ex¬ 
ample of their king, the Babylonians gave them¬ 
selves up to orgies in which religious frenzy and 
drunken excitement formed a strange and revolt¬ 
ing spectacle. 

“ Meanwhile, outside the city, in silence and 
darkness, the Persians watched at the two points 
where the Euphrates entered and left the walls. 
Anxiously they noted the gradual sinking of the 
water in the river-bed ; still more anxiously they 
watched to see if those within the walls would 
observe the suspicious circumstances, and sound 
an alarm through the town. Should such an 
alarm be given, all their labors would be lost. 
But as they watched, no sounds of alarm reached 
them ; only a confused noise of revel and riot, 
which showed that the unhappy townsmen were 
quite unconscious of the approach of danger. 

“ At last shadowy forms began to emerge from 
the obscurity of the deep river-bed, and on the 
landing-places, opposite the river gates, scattered 
clusters of men grew into solid columns. The 
undefended gateways were seized, a war-shout 
was raised, the alarm was taken and spread, and 
swift runners were started off to ‘ show the Kin? 
of Babylon that his city was taken at one end.’ 
In the darkness and confusion of the night, a ter¬ 
rible massacre ensued. The drunken revellers 


Ancient Asia . 


47 


could make no resistance. The king, paralyzed 
with fear at the awful handwriting on the wall, 
which too late had warned him of his peril, could 
do nothing even to check the progress of the 
assailants, who carried all before them everywhere. 
Bursting into the palace, a band of Persians made 
their way to the presence of the monarch, and 
slew him on the scene of his impious revelry. 
Other bands carried fire and the sword through 
the town. When morning came, Cyrus found 
himself undisputed master of the city.” 

The rise of the Persians to power was a benefit 
to the human race. They were, at first, a simple, 
hardy, and brave people ; intelligent, chaste, and 
truthful; patriarchal in manners and religion, and 
far in advance of other Asiatic races. This first 
stage of the Persian race, known as the Aryan, was 
afterwards modified by the conquest of the Medes, 
from whom they received the whole ceremonial 
of Magianism, together with its fire-worship and 
divinities. The overthrow of the Babylonians 
reduced the Persians to almost the level of the 
lowest Asiatics. They became effeminate, cow¬ 
ardly, and cruel, sensual and mean, lazy, glut¬ 
tonous, and idolatrous. They were, however, 
instrumental in transferring power from a baser 
race than themselves to higher, nobler, and more 
civilized people. There is a great resemblance 


48 Ireland among the Nations . 


between the Celts of Scotia and the older Per¬ 
sians. The Aryan tribal relations, the simplicity 
of their religion, the dresses and ornaments, the 
doctrines, usages, and tenets of the Magi, the 
military practices, and many habits of private 
and public life, decidedly establish some link 
of connection between Scotia and Persia. 

Of all these, the Ninivites, Babylonians, and 
Persians, very little is left to-day. Where the 
wealth and glories of Assyria and Persia were 
the wonder of nations, there nothing is left but 
miles of mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates ; 
and together with the enormous walls, and brazen 
gates, and hanging gardens, and gorgeous palaces, 
and gigantic temples of ancient capitals, have been 
buried the genius, power, civilization, and influ¬ 
ence of the Assyrian and Persian races on the 
human family. They have shown how despotism 
can degrade mankind, and as a lump of lead sinks 
into the ocean they have disappeared from among 
men, and, in the words of the Prophet Sophonias, 
have left their beautiful cities “ a wilderness, and 
as a place not passable, and as a desert. The 
flocks have lain down in the midst thereof, the 
beasts of all nations ; the bittern and the urchin 
have lodged in the threshold thereof; the voice 
of the singing-bird in the window, the raven in 
the upper post.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE GREEKS. 

T is refreshing to turn from the effete 
nations of Asia to the land of Japheth, 
where we find fresh muscle and fresh 
brain, new energy and new impetus. 
The Asiatics were indolent, sensual, and slavish ; 
the Greeks were active, intelligent, and independ¬ 
ent. The soft climate of Asia, the enormous 
multitudes of its inhabitants, and the vast wealth 
of its countries, together with its despotic forms 
of government, begot a host of unthinking, unen¬ 
lightened, and unresisting races ; but the barren 
crags, and lovely vales, and sea-beaten or sea- 
kissed islands of Greece, overspread with a net¬ 
work of mountain ranges, produced a thinking, 
self-reliant, and liberty-loving people. We find 
nothing of the hugeness so peculiarly Asiatic, 
but the vast range of intellectual concep¬ 
tion, and the unbounded development of the 
grandeur of intelligence, and the enrapturing 
flights of chaste imaginativeness, and the un¬ 
paralleled elevation of the spiritual powers in 








50 


Ireland among the Nations. 


man transcend the wildest dreams of the gor¬ 
geous Orient. 

It is scarcely possible to overestimate the in¬ 
fluence of Greece upon the human race. Outside 
of the high republican form of government which 
the Mosaic revelation had given to the Jewish 
race, and which had been basely repudiated by 
an ungrateful nation, we look in vain for any¬ 
thing like the powers of the Grecian mind to 
effect human organization. The individual was 
lost in Asiatic discipline; but the Grecian system 
made each man a tower of strength in the city, 
the state, and the army, by substituting inde¬ 
pendent and intelligent individual action for the 
unrecognized and undisplayed powers of the 
Oriental. Manhood, freedom, and energy were 
the basis of Grecian life. Imbued with such 
notions, the Greek in his enterprise never halted, 
whether his thoughts were directed to war or 
peace, to philosophy or poetry, to science or 
knowledge, to life or death. And in all these 
departments of study, mankind has received more 
from Attica and Lacedaemon, Athens and Sparta, 
than any other two states and two cities on the sur¬ 
face of the globe. Athens still moulds the brains 
of the human race, and Sparta still rouses the 
human spirit and fires the human heart. The de¬ 
mocracy of Athens and the oligarchy of Sparta 



The Greeks . 


5i 


have each in its own way been productive of good. 
To the democracy of Athens we are indebted for 
vast treasures of knowledge ; and to the oligarchy 
of Sparta valor, patriotism, and religion owe a 
lasting debt. These states, holding the hegemony 
of Greece, communicated their influence far and 
wide among the Grecian peoples. 

What has mankind received from Greece ? 
Socrates and Plato founded schools of philoso¬ 
phy in the pagan world, whose methods were 
communicated to the Christian church, and have 
been felt to our own times. In poetry, Homer is, 
and probably will be to the end of time, the 
prince of epic poetry. Sophocles, yEschylus, 
and Euripides are without rivals in tragedy. 
Euclid’s book has been an unsurpassed work in 
the schools of the world for over two thousand 
years. In the senates of the world to-day, Cicero’s 
orations would be considered fustian ; but the 
speeches of Demosthenes would be regarded as 
eloquent and practical, and hearkened to with 
approval and success. Socrates and Longinus, as 
critics, outshine Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian. 
The world is undecided as to whether the palm 
belongs to Horace or Pindar in lyric poetry. 
Livy and Caesar stand alone in bearing off the 
prize from Herodotus and Xenophon ; though, in 
the poetic radiance of Herodotus, there is a com- 


5 2 


Ireland among the Nations. 


pensation for the measured magnificence of Livy ; 
and, in the artless simplicity of Xenophon, there 
is an equivalent for the careless accuracy and 
masterly imagery of Caesar. 

The triumphs of Grecian valor and the suc¬ 
cesses of Roman bravery had a different scope. 
The bravery of the Fabii was no less than that 
of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans ; 
but the innumerable multitudes opposed to the 
Spartan leader have immeasurably heightened the 
glory of Leonidas. The naval struggles of Rome 
with Carthage belittle the evacuation of Athens 
and the maritime discomfiture of the Persians ; 
but the genius of Greece has dazzled the judg¬ 
ment of nations, and shed more glory on the arms 
of Greece than the valor of her warriors. We 
find evidence in Machabees of the high esteem 
in which the natural virtues of the Greeks and 
Romans were held by the Hebrews. 

Greece owed much to its Amphictyonic assem¬ 
blies. These meetings, which are said to date 
back as early as fifteen centuries before Christ, 
were representative in character, and were held 
near the most celebrated temples. There was 
one at Argos, near the temple of Juno ; another 
at Corinth, near the temple of Neptune ; a third 
at Eolia, near the temple of Apollo ; a fourth 
at Thermopylae, near the temple of Ceres; but 


The Greeks . 


53 


the most powerful and celebrated of all was the 
Ampliictyonic Council of Delphi. It represented 
twelve peoples of Greece ; and, thotigh any of 
these might send as many delegates as it chose, 
each people had but -two votes. This Amphic- 
tyonic assembly, which met twice a year—in 
spring at Delphi, and in autumn at Thermopylae 
—constituted a national government for the 
twelve confederated states. Its duties were to 
watch over the general welfare, to settle disputes 
between state and state, to prevent or carry on 
wars, and to uphold the national interests of 
Greece at home and abroad. 

The Greeks enjoyed the right of franchise in 
their own states as well as at the national meet¬ 
ings. The Areopagus, or upper house, and the 
Agora, or people’s meeting, were based on the 
votes of the people. A more aristocratic form 
of government obtained at Lacedaemon. In the 
army, only the leaders were admitted to the 
council called Boule; but the common soldiers 
took part in the assembly called Ecclesia, or 
Agora. Unfortunately, however, liberty, election, 
and franchise with the Greeks were for Greeks; 
and in the Grecian states the vast body of the 
people were disqualified by law. Neither the 
Jews in Egypt nor the captives of the Babylo¬ 
nian and Persian empires underwent servitude 


54 


Ireland anion? the Nations. 

o 


more oppressive and brutalizing, than that of 
the slaves in Attica and the helots in Lacedce- 
'mon. By the cryptic law (cryptia), the Spartan 
youth were allowed to steal upon slaves, and, by 
murdering them, render themselves more expert 
in case of war. Alas ! that among the scholars of 
Greece there could be found minds to tolerate 
and justify such barbarity, savagery, and inhu¬ 
manity. 

The entrance of the Macedonians into the 
Amphictyonic League was the forerunner of the 
downfall of Greece. The states, to preserve their 
union, needed a stronger central authority than 
that at Delphi; and Greece proper being over¬ 
flooded with hordes of slaves, whose rights she 
ignored, and who, in turn, cared little for her 
welfare, was ill prepared to cope with the brave, 
bold, and free warriors of Macedonia. Accord¬ 
ingly, when the crisis came, Greece saw the light 
of liberty extinguished by the Macedonian con¬ 
queror, Philip; because, being unjust to others, 
and loving liberty only for herself, she was torn 
asunder,by disunion, and paralyzed by the use¬ 
less, weighty, and unmanageable luggage of 
slavery. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE ROMANS. 

O one cenies the importance of the high 
and momentous questions connected 
with the Roman name. It is an un¬ 
questionable fact that, in the history 
of the human race, the Romans occupy the most 
prominent position. To the eyes of the historian, 
the Roman world is amongst the nations of by¬ 
gone centuries what, to the eyes of the astrono¬ 
mer, the sun is amongst the heavenly bodies. 
The generative causes of that outshining social 
edifice have occupied the most splendid intellects 
of past ages, and have been examined by the best 
minds of our own day. To some it seems that 
the nations of the earth were welded into one 
body by the superior military mechanism of the 
Romans, and that the impaired efficiency of this 
military machinery, together with a certain mys¬ 
terious fatality, produced the disintegration of 
the Roman Empire by destroying the cohesive 
qualities of Roman rule. We know, indeed, that 
vast empires have been born of the sword; but 
we have yet to learn that an empire embrac- 






56 Ireland among the Nations . 


ing the nations, religions, and languages of the 
earth could have been founded on and con¬ 
served for centuries by military mechanism. 
The Romans, like Attila, or Genghis Khan, or 
Alexander, or Sesostris, might have gone forth, 
and, either by bravery, or superior tactics, or vast 
levied armies, have overrun the nations of the 
earth ; but military mechanism could never have 
raised and sustained through a long lapse of 
ages a mighty republic built on vanquished peo¬ 
ples. And yet Rome not only conquered and 
incorporated vanquished races, but bound them 
to the centre, Rome ; so much so that they lost 
nationality, language, and institutions to become 
Romans. Rome not only Romanized Italy, but 
Italianized the then known world. In the days 
of Hadrian and Trajan, the waves of the Mediter¬ 
ranean knew no lord but the Roman; from the 
margin of that sea were wafted the wealth and 
produce of the world towards Rome ; and, far 
beyond that margin, the genius and power of 
Rome were transforming nations, building roads 
and palaces, founding cities, subdividing pro¬ 
vinces, spreading the Latin language, and stamp¬ 
ing the mind of Latium on the human race. From 
the Padus to Iapygium, the names of the Italian 
tribes were merged into the name of Rome. The 
men of Mesraim bowed before the Roman eagle, 


The Romans. 


57 


and saw the traditions of two thousand years van¬ 
ish away before the institutions of Rome. Asiatic 
cities renounced their pride of birth, and Greece 
yielded up a rich heritage of literary and mili¬ 
tary glory. The fiery valor of the Gauls, and the 
martial memories of Western nations, were sur¬ 
mounted by the unconquerable energy of the 
Roman mind. To Rome the known nations of 
the earth became as handmaids, and paid hom¬ 
age through a dozen generations. Whatever had 
been great in the world, whatever beautiful, what¬ 
ever renowned, whatever ennobling, was swal¬ 
lowed up in the mighty name of Rome. And 
when, amid the upheaving of humanity and the 
undulations of races, Rome sank as a ship in a 
troubled ocean, her spirit lived to elevate the Ital¬ 
ian, the Spaniard, the Frank, the Norman, to be the 
princes of the families of mankind. Could mili¬ 
tary mechanism have accomplished such results ? 
Could military mechanism, when it was no more, 
possess a renovating influence? Does not Sallust 
assert the superiority of the Gauls to the Romans 
in war ? Besides, it is debatable whether the 
military systems of the Greeks are not prefer¬ 
able to the war tactics of the Romans. The 
Thessalian cavalry and the Macedonian phalanx, 
with its adaptability to evolutions, can stand a 
strict critical comparison with the Roman equites 


58 Ireland among the Nations 

and the Roman legion. The variety of move¬ 
ments in the phalanx, despite its inflexible and 
inseparable character, may well compensate for 
the individual and displayed energy of the 
Roman combination. That Polybius judges the 
mechanism of the Roman superior to that of the 
Greek may be ascribable to the fact that he pre¬ 
ferred attributing the subjugation of his country¬ 
men, not to a superiority of valor, but of military 
manoeuvres. Does any one suppose that the 
army of Pompey, twice as numerous as that of 
Caesar, was worsted through the defect of theo¬ 
retic military mechanism, rather than through the 
deficiency of the qualities which make a soldier ? 
If any one will take the trouble of writing, in 
parallel columns, the organization, sub-organiza¬ 
tions, the war habiliments, the aggressive and 
defensive weapons, the laws of army management 
in sieges, in march, in battle, and in the tent, as 
they existed in Greece and Rome, we would 
leave to his candid judgment the decision on the 
speculative excellence of Grecian and Roman war 
systems considered as a whole. 

And on the sea, the Romans were tyros when 
the Greeks had attained considerable perfection. 
The Romans defeated the Carthaginians, not 
on a system indigenous to the waters of La- 
tium, but with a fleet formed after the fashion 


The Romans. 


59 


of an inimical craft wrecked on the Italian shore. 
In the progressive days of Rome, the nomen¬ 
clature of the parts and naval acts of a Roman 
vessel was suggested by or adopted from the pre¬ 
existing terminology of Greece. What thence ? 
Do we depreciate the military mechanism of 
Rome ? By no means. But we unhesitatingly 
object to placing-it as the primary cause of the 
elevation of Rome to the pinnacle of power. 
Where others place military mechanism, we 
would substitute Roman character and Roman 
institutions. In no place did character and insti¬ 
tutions more powerfully concur to elevate the 
individual than in the city of old Rome, on the 
banks of the Tiber, in the state of Latium. The 
kings imparted a multifold and vigorous develop¬ 
ment to the martial, the religious, the aesthetical,’ 
the governmental, and the utilitarian tendencies 
of the people. These fountains of grandeur 
poured their united streams of glory through 
the five centuries of the Republic into a mag¬ 
nificent reservoir, to empty which there was 
demanded the lapse of five hundred years of 
enfeebling despotism. It would be long to trace 
the single developments. But we can see, and 
might explain by fact^, that, in as far as Rome 
incorporated with equalization other powers, so 
far did she strengthen and aggrandize herself; 


6 o 


Ireland among the Nations . 


whereas incorporations subjected to unequality 
• were co-causes of her destruction. In the Books 
of the Machabees, we see that the Jews, in their 
emergency, called in the Romans as the justest 
amongst the Gentiles. In his preface, Livy says: 
“ But either am I deceived by the love of my 
contemplated work, or there never has been a 
republic so great, so holy, so rich in good ex¬ 
amples ; nor one into which avarice and luxury 
were introduced at so late a date ; nor one in 
which poverty and parsimony were in such 
lasting honor; so much so that the less the 
riches, the less the cupidity. Lately wealth 
imported avarice, and overflowing opulence be¬ 
got a desire to ruin and destroy everything 
through extravagance and luxury.” It is always 
safer to accuse those that are dead than those 
with whom we live ; and surely the historian that 
did not dread to attack the living would not have 
failed to arraign the dead had the dead deserved 
it. The cause of the expulsion of Tarquin, and his 
banishment, consecrated an individual self-respect 
which evermore remained an important element 
in the Roman character. This self-respect is the 
bulwark of individual freedom, and the most inde¬ 
structible foundation of a social edifice. From it 
arose the right to suffrage, the right to commerce , 
the right to marriage, the right to honors. It was 


The Romans. 


61 


the mine which blew up, first the patricians, and 
then the nobles. This self-respect imparted for¬ 
titude to the soldier, wisdom to the statesman, 
honor to the merchant. The individual was 
clothed with the majesty of his country. To 
uphold that majesty was the first duty of the 
Roman. Allied with self-respect, unchangeable¬ 
ness of purpose appears as a trait of the Roman 
character. Athens might have been a Rome had 
the Athenian spirit the persistency of the Roman. 
But there was, perhaps, no formative element of 
the Roman character so prominent as the practi¬ 
cal common sense which made them learners in 
all the departments of life. The Romans admit¬ 
ted the perfectibility of their institutions and 
practices, so as to adopt from foreigners whatever 
they deemed an improvement. The Spartan loved 
his country as intensely and as devotedly as the 
Roman ; but Sparta, rejecting the eclecticism of 
Rome, remained cramped and undeveloped in 
its exclusiveness. These qualities of mind, to¬ 
gether with a physical strength such as appears 
from the saying of Pyrrhus, “ Had I the Romans 
for soldiers, I could conquer the world,” led 
Rome along the highway of glory and power. 

But the Roman character was stained with 
dark and deplorable vices. The incalculable 
- wealth and the boundless power of Rome gave 


62 Ireland among the Nations. 

birth to a sensuality unsurpassed even in ancient 
.Asiatic cities. The proud lords of the world 
looked down with disdain on conquered provinces 
and fallen nationalities; and, in the flow of time, 
the stern virtues of the Roman Republic were 
superseded by the hollow rottenness and empty 
glitter of the Roman Empire. The sewers of the 
world, with all their filth, were emptied into Rome 
as a common receptacle. Polytheism, with all its 
debasing influences of lust, ignorance, arrogance, 
and untold abominations, set up its throne in 
Rome. Slavery, with its train of woes, inhuman¬ 
ity, injustice, hardheartedness, outrage, oppres¬ 
sion, insecurity, and crime, gnawed like a cancer 
at the vitals of Roman society. 

What a mournful spectacle ! Despotic power 
enthroned with dazzling gorgeousness amid the¬ 
atres, amphitheatres, palaces, baths, and monu¬ 
ments, inheriting the magnificence and glory of all 
previous time, honored from the rising to the set¬ 
ting sun, and holding in its grasp the wealth and 
dominion of the world ; but underneath, and away 
to the far-distant provinces by the Euphrates, the 
Tagus, the Danube, and the Nile, we see nothing 
but extortion, degradation, misery, human suffer¬ 
ing, and slavery ! Could such a state of society, 
destitute of innate vitality, possess a lasting 
power ? Accordingly, we find that the elements 


The Romans . 


6 3 


of Roman life, which were founded on Roman 
virtues, outlived the overthrow of Rome, while 
its rottenness, and grandeur, and glitter passed 
away. From Rome we have inherited its culture, 
its power of organization, its self-respect, its 
unchangeableness x>f purpose, its common-sense 
eclecticism, its institutions, and its language in 
different dialects, as a common legacy of the 
human family; but the barbarians, who had 
been brought up in hardy and valorous simpli¬ 
city of life, rolled over the Roman Empire, and, 
like a deluge, swept away all the perishable ele¬ 
ments in that astounding fabric. With a mourn¬ 
ful and melancholy fatality Rome went down, 
and left in its fall a memorial vindication of truth, 
justice, and humanity in the providence of God. 

Herein is a lesson for Ireland, who saw her 
days of pride as well as her days of shame, to 
hate injustice, inhumanity, human degradation ; 
and, while she keeps her feet unfettered with the 
chains of vice, sin, and slavery, to press forward 
in a noble rivalry of virtue, justice, and truth. 
When we hear the irons of despotism clanking 
on the limbs of nations in the distance, we know 
not how soon they may sound at our own door ; 
for the ways of tyrants are unknown, and despot¬ 
ism, like a dark cloud in the distance, may come 
and break over us at any moment. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE TEUTONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 

N the vast country which extends from 
the Danube to the German Ocean, 
and which spreads away indefinitely 
from the Rhine towards the Carpa¬ 
thian Mountains, the Oder, and the Dnieper, 
there always lived a brave and noble people. 
They never bowed to the Roman yoke; but, 
after surging towards its confines for centuries, 
at length burst the barriers, and carried deso¬ 
lation and destruction irresistibly on their 
course. From Germany came the Franks, who 
revived the Western empire under Charle¬ 
magne, and thence came the Anglo-Saxons, 
who built up the heptarchy in England. The 
valor and manhood of the German Arminius are 
known the world over; and there is nothing in 
the annals of the world to surpass the- heroic 
resistance of the Saxons to Charlemagne. Occu¬ 
pying the grand central commanding position in 
Europe, they have always held close relations 
with Italy, France, Constantinople, and the 
North. Their connections with Italy were al- 










The Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. 65 

ways-of a disagreeable nature, and involved both 
nations in wars, feuds, and endless controversies 
on the relative claims of civil and ecclesiastical 
authorities. From France they gained much and 
suffered much. As the Romans suffered much 
from the Teutons, so they in turn were harassed 
continually by nations further to the north and 
northeast. With Ireland and England their inter¬ 
course was of a more amicable character ; for, 
after Scotia, both England and Scotia undertook 
the joint labor of introducing civilization with 
the Christian religion into Germany. Their labors 
were crowned with the highest success; and 
even to this day their influence has not been 
lost. 

The Saxon branch of the Teutonic race gave 
birth to a noble people, friends of the Scots both 
in Albania and Hibernia, and rivals, not in the 
dark deeds of war and plunder, but in the bright 
course of learning, sanctity, and beneficence. It 
is a great mistake to mix up the history of the 
Saxons with the black crimes of the Normans ; 
for the Saxons were a simple, just, and saintly 
race ; lovers of learning, truth, and peace ; es¬ 
pecial friends of the inhabitants of southern 
Ireland. To the Saxon and Scottish races Ger¬ 
many is indebted for the transformation of the 
Fatherland from barbarism to a state of civiliza¬ 
tion. Germany received from them the Roman 


66 


Ireland among the Nations. 


alphabet, its knowledge of law, its religion, and 
its culture. Tacitus mentions the Germans a.s 
having been always fond of music—a fact which 
was true at the time of the Saxon and Scottish 
missionaries. Germany has given the organ to 
the world, but received the harp from the Scots. 

Ever since the conversion of Germany, its influ¬ 
ence has been felt on the human race. Little did 
those Saxon and Irish saints, and scholars, and 
wanderers dream, as they passed' the seas in their 
wicker boats, and traversed interminable jungles, 
that the cities they were founding, and the peo¬ 
ples they were educating, would be the parents 
of mighty empires and nations, and of a new 
civilization outshining that of Rome, and Athens, 
and Jerusalem. 

Many years the result of their labors was de¬ 
layed by the feuds of princes, the despotism of 
rulers, the intrigues of the ambitious, and the 
degrading influences of feudalism. Many years 
did generations sigh for repose, and sigh for it in 
vain. At length with intelligence came light, 
and with light, union, and with union, strength, 
and with strength, freedom. Many generations 
have already garnered the harvest of the seed 
sown in Germany over a thousand years ago by 
Saxons, Caledonians, and Hibernians, who were 
the men of light, and leading in their day. Shall 
it be so once more ? What says Ireland ? 


CHAPTER X. 


THE MOHAMMEDANS AND THE ARABS. 

N the vast peninsula on the south¬ 
western extremity of Asia lies the 
home of the Mohammedan and the 
Arab. Since the days when Abra¬ 
ham turned Ismael and Agar into the desert, 
down to the time of Cyrus and Cambyses, and 
from Cyrus and Cambyses to the ill-fated expedi¬ 
tion of AEliiis Gallus under Augustus, and down 
to the wild, nomadic reign of the Bedouins in our 
own day, the red, sandy deserts of Arabia have 
been the free domains of an unconquered race. 
Mohammedanism alone seems to have left its 
footprints on Arabia’s undulating seas of sand. 
Mohammedanism, however, was no foreign im¬ 
portation, but an indigenous growth endowed 
with cohesive powers, by which scattered tribes 
and lawless sheiks were banded into one nation 
and one army, under one religion and one govern¬ 
ment, and grew to be a mighty power in the 
world. During the end of the sixth century and 
the beginning of the seventh, there appeared in 
Arabia a man who worked, within half a century, 







68 Ireland among the Nations . 

a revolution never witnessed in any nation. This 
was Mohammed, or Mahomet. He stamped his 
mind upon his nation ; he moulded his country¬ 
men to a new destiny ; his religious views became 
ingrained in the national character; ‘his reign and 
legislation were recognized by clans which had 
existed unsubdued from the foundations of so¬ 
ciety; disunion was superseded by union, dis¬ 
trust by confidence, and discord by harmony; his 
death was followed by a theocratic empire, in 
which Arab and Mohammedan were equivalent 
terms. And this new-born Arab Mohammedan 
Empire, established in the centre of the Old 
World’s populations, burst its barriers on all 
sides, and was enlarged to the north and the 
south, and the east and the west. The tide of 
Mohammedan conquest rolled to the west over 
Egypt, and along the northern shores of Africa 
to the Pillars of Hercules. Thence it swept over 
Spain, and from Spain across the Pyrenees into 
France, where it was stayed by the Franks under 
Charles Martel, after a century of uninterrupted 
conquests and triumphs. To the north the 
armies ofHslamism overran Syria, subdued Asia 
Minor, planted the crescent on the Golden Horn, 
and were arrested in their career of glory before 
the walls of Vienna by John Sobieski, of Poland. 
Southward and eastward the followers of the 


The Mohammedans and the Arabs, 69 

mighty Arab established his sway amongst the 
multitudinous populations that dwelt on either 
side of the two thousand miles’ range of the snow- 
crowned Hindoo Koosh. Thus, Arab influence 
extended over three continents, and the great 
Arab religion contains to-day within its fold one 
hundred and ten millions of the human race. 

The prodigious spread of Mohammedanism was 
due, in a great measure, to the najtural character 
of the Arab. Cunning by nature, quick in exe¬ 
cution, impassioned in the pursuit of power, 
nomadic in customs, reckless with regard to life, 
brilliant in intellectual endowments, deeply im¬ 
pressionable in his religious sensibilities, estranged 
from the ties of home, and wildly imaginative in 
the pursuit of novelty and glory, the Arab of the 
desert was splendid material for a fanatic soldier. 
There was no danger he would not brave, no sacri¬ 
fices he would not make, no sufferings he would 
not undergo, no conquest he would not undertake, 
and for centuries there was no undertaking which 
he did not accomplish. The Prophet of Mecca 
was intensely national in character, and gifted 
with the most brilliant, effective, and captivating 
endowments of his countrymen. Profoundly de¬ 
votional and remarkably far-sighted, he made his 
first appeals to the religious instincts of his coun¬ 
trymen, and presented them with a religion to 


70 Ireland among the Nations. 

suit the sects of Arabia—being partly Christian, 
partly Jewish, and partly pagan. The absolute 
unity, isolation, and supremacy of God form the 
corner-stone of the Moha’mmedan edifice, which 
was, at first, simple and sublime in its conception, 
but became deformed and unsightly afterwards 
by the doctrine of fatalism, the promise of .sensu¬ 
ous enjoyments in a future world, and the dog¬ 
mas of dependence, resignation, and indifference. 
Having gained the religious allegiance of the Arab 
zealot, Mohammed appealed to the doctrine of 
propagandism by the sword. To fiery fanatics, 
bred in the perils of the desert and barren moun¬ 
tains of Arabia, inured to hardship, and believ¬ 
ing in a remorseless God with whom there was 
nothing acceptable but salvation or destruction, 
there was a magic spell and an irresistible charm 
in the tenets and practices of Mohammedanism. 
They witnessed victory after victory set upon 
their banner; they beheld their armies swell, 
their wealth and domination increase; and they 
were borne by an uncontrollable impulse to sub¬ 
jugate the world to Allah and his prophet, Moham¬ 
med. The morality of Mussulman polygamy was 
highly suitable to Asiatic indolence, and the rigid 
discipline of Mohammedan ceremonies and pen¬ 
ances was an admirable means of awakening Orien¬ 
tal enthusiasm, and inflaming Oriental passions 


The Mohammedans and the Arabs . 71 

previous to battles and wars. Surrounded by 
effete nations, beset with intestine divisions, ha¬ 
rassed by jealous neighbors, devoid of vitality and 
resisting power, Mohammedanism pressed along 
the paths of victory with the triple force of reli¬ 
gious fury, greed of political domination, and the 
consciousness of superior merit from dazzling suc¬ 
cesses. With the sword in one hand and the 
Koran in the other, the Mussulman went forth 
conquering and to conquer. 

But the fatal seeds of decomposition and stag¬ 
nation were engrafted on Islamism. The utter 
degradation of the female sex ; the abject slavery 
to which conquered races were reduced ; the unre¬ 
stricted submission of every Mussulman to theo¬ 
cratic power ; the haughtiness, ignorance, effemi¬ 
nacy, and indolence of rulers; the migration to 
more genial climes and more fertile countries; 
and the relaxing influences of lust and luxury, 
were so many inborn organic diseases in the 
Mohammedan constitution, and with the roll of 
ages have changed the valorous, sun-burnt chil¬ 
dren of Mohammed into the lazy loons of the 
Turkish Empire. 'Since, the power of Islamism 
was frittered into foam at Poitiers, Vienna, and 
Lepanto, the waves of Mussulmanic empire are 
receding to their centre in the sandy plateaus of 
Arabia, whence they spread. The day is not far 


72 


Ireland among the Nations. 


. distant when the church of St. Sophia, at Con¬ 
stantinople, may be crowned by the Greek cross 
instead of the Ottoman crescent. 

Notwithstanding its many black spots, the reli¬ 
gious followers of Mohammedanism have done 
much good for the'human family. The grosser 
forms of heathen worship were eliminated over a 
large tract of the earth’s surface by its agency. 
It developed the Arabic language to an incredible 
perfection, opened schools and universities'in con¬ 
quered countries, has given birth to a magnificent 
indigenous poetry, and in many respects opened 
the gates of light to the civilization which we now 
enjoy. Medicine, mathematics, astronomy, laws, 
chemistry, botany, geography, architecture, and 
civilization must trace many of their rudimentary 
elements to the twenty “ holy empires ” which the 
followers of the great Prophet of Mecca founded. 

Mohammedanism possessed many of the traits 
of Judaism, and in many respects the Moham¬ 
medans may be set down as step-brothers of the 
Jews. Is there not a striking analogy between 
the subjugation of the Promised Land by Josue 
and the conquests of Mohammedan commanders? 
Do not the annals of Islamism supply us with 
numberless counterparts of Joseph subjugating 
the Egyptians to Pharao,of Judith deceiving Holo- 
fernes, and of Esther asking leave from Assuerus 


The •Mohammedans and the A rabs. 73 

that the Jews might slaughter the Gentiles? Is 
there not among them the same isolation and 
absence of brotherhood among nations which 
characterized the Hebrews under the Mosaic dis¬ 
pensation? The Jews and Mohammedans are 
allied in language, in legislation, in their views 
of polygamy and concubines, in their hatred of 
the heathen, in their haughty self-importance, in 
their manners, practice's, and customs. I say, 
then, that Mohammedanism is nothing more than 
an enlarged and ferocious Judaism. Happily for 
the human family, a nobler light, and a higher 
civilization, and a more blessed philanthropy are 
shining upon the face of nations ; and we may 
hope for the day when nation shall smile back to 
nation, and race shall make haste to succor race, 
and tribe shall send its gratulations to tribe, and 
men shall work out their destiny amid interna¬ 
tional peace, international comity, and interna¬ 
tional civilization, without the drag-chains of 
slavery, despotism, and human degradation. 


CHAPTER XI. 


t 

THE NORMAN AND THE DANE. 


^SH|OT amid the sandy seas of Arabia, but 
on the wild and uninviting steppes of 
Scandinavia, arose the Norman and 
the Dane. On the one hand, the 
perils of the desert and the scorching sun of 
Southern Asia gave birth to a race of warriors 


in the Arab tribes; on the other, the pale, gleam¬ 
ing icebergs, the sunless ravines, the snow-clad 
plains, and the ocean-leaguered shores of Sweden, 
Norway, Jutland, and the islands of the Baltic 
archipelago, sent, through nearly a thousand 
years, army after army of unsubdued warriors 
into the sunnier and more genial climes of Eu¬ 
rope. Through the wide plains and dark forests 
of Sarmatia and Germania, the barbaric hordes 
of the North rolled as an irresistible avalanche 
on the Roman Empire. Scandinavian armies set¬ 
tled upon Europe, and gave birth to the mediaeval 
or feudal system. 

Westward, along their favorite element, the sea- 
captains and marauders of Scandinavia directed 
their line of conquest, from the beginning of the 






The Norman and the Dane. 


75 


ninth century to that of the eleventh, towards 
the shores of holy but unhappy Ireland. Long 
was thy struggle, and dreadful were thy sacrifices, 
O Ireland ! but the black raven standard of the 
North, and the proud vikings of Northern coasts, 
and the boastful sagas of Northern prowess, saw 
the sun of their glory set before the cross of Ire¬ 
land, in the hands of Brien Boroihme, on the 
Good Friday of the year A.D. 1014 ! The religion 
of the Nprthman, which consigned its enemies to 
destruction, and which reared a visionary happi¬ 
ness in a future world amid eternal icy palaces ; 
the institutions which ignored legal rights, upheld 
might, and discarded moral obligations ; the his¬ 
tory which was written in the savage cruelty of 
bloody deeds and inhuman acts—these treasures 
of conquering Scandinavia were buried in the 
ground, and for ever covered up by the right hand 
of united Ireland on the plain of Clontarf! 

But the tide.of victory from the North had set¬ 
tled in Neustria, and the descendants of the sea- 
rovers whose hardihood and daring had evoked 
the admiration of Charlemagne, sealed the fate 
of the Saxon race under William the Conqueror, 
in 1066. Elevated by Christianity, restless by 
nature, flushed by>victory, military by tradition 
and education, the Normans rolled a remorseless 
and impetuous power over England, and swept 


76 Ireland among the Nations. 

away the aspirations of Britons, Saxons, and 
Danes. 

About one hundred years afterwards, the un¬ 
ceasing activity of England’s Norman conquerors 
was called into a disunited Ireland by a faithless 
Irish prince, and the standard of the Dane, under 
the name of Norman, was planted on the plain 
of Clontarf, and ruled within the Pale. It re¬ 
quired, after the lapse of over four hundred 
years, the introduction of religious prejudice, 
the breaking up of the grand and ancient Celtic 
race, and the collision of the Celts of Erin with 
the Celts of Caledonia, to set aside the barriers 
between the flow of Norman conquest and the 
hitherto unconquered Irish race. Are they con¬ 
quered to-day ? Hereafter I shall answer this 
question ; but I here remark that the Saxons 
suffered from Norman invasion just as the Celts; 
that the Normans were the victors in the case of 
Britons, Saxons, Danes, Caledonians, and Irish ; 
that the separation of Scotland from Ireland was 
the ruin of the Celtic race; and that there is no 
greater bane than religious acrimony among the 
Irish of our day. Ireland conquered the Dane; 
the Dane returned under the name of Norman, 
and has subjected Ireland ! 


CHAPTER XII. 

V 

MEDIAEVAL ITALIAN REPUBLICS. 

NDER the fair skies of beautiful Italy, 
the goddess of Christian liberty and 
republican democracy was seen. The 
Jewish nation had had a theocratic 
republican form of government, but it was limited 
to their nation, and weighted down with Mosaic 
observances. The black pall of slavery, with its 
concomitant train of evils, rested like a deadly 
nightmare on the ancient republics of Carthage, 
Sparta, Athens, and Rome. In the full blaze of 
Grecian culture and intelligence, Aristotle wrote 
in his Politics : “ It is evident that some are nat¬ 
urally freemen, and others naturally slaves; and, 
in the case of the latter, slavery is as useful as it 
is just.” But on Italian soil, after Christianity 
had conquered the paganism of Rome and the 
barbarism of the North, republics of liberty, fra¬ 
ternity, and equality were cradled under the fos¬ 
tering influences of the church. On the banks 
of the Arno, in beautiful Florence; in Genoa, the 
crescent sea-city on the mountains; in Venice, 






yS Ireland among the Nations . 


the queen of the sea ; in Rome, the Tiber city on 
the seven hills, and along the rocky range of the 
Apennines to the towns and mountains of Tri- 
nacria, the doctrines of human freedom had their 
growth, in some places under one governmental 
form ; in others, under another. 

Though the oligarchies and democracies of 
mediaeval Italian cities were stained with many 
crimes and crippled with many drawbacks, they 
have conferred many signal advantages on Europe 
and the human race. To them may be traced the 
rise or revival of commerce, industry, manufac¬ 
tures, architecture, sculpture, poetry, painting, 
music, geography, self-government, and the ex¬ 
tension of human knowledge. The Papacy, 
though a kingly theocracy in form, has always 
been a patriarchal democracy in reality. Since 
the days of Athens and Alexandria, no two cities 
have done so much for the advancement of hu¬ 
man knowledge among mankind as Rome and 
Florence in the middle ages. They contain more 
masterpieces in every department of art than any 
other cities ; and while Rome has always been a 
centre of light and learning, Florence can boast 
of being the birthplace of Dante, Petrarch, Boc¬ 
caccio, Guicciardini, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Galileo, 
Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto 
Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, and Amerigo Yes- 


Me dice veil Italian Republics. 


79 


pucci. Rome has been the double glory of Italy 
in civil and religious life. 

And when we consider the incalculable bless¬ 
ings which the Italian republics of the middle 
ages have conferred upon mankind, it is not 
necessary to mourn over their shortcomings, 
their sorrows, their changes, and their imperma- 
nency ; the rather as they were the aurora of a 
brighter light, and the forerunner of republics, 
which in our day we see established on a higher 
scale, among mightier peoples, in broader lands, 
and under happier auspices. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE BYZANTINE GREEKS. 

« 

HE city of Byzantium, Constantinople, 
or Stamboul, which was founded by 
Byzas 656 B.C., rebuilt by Constantine 
A.D. 326, taken by the Crusaders in 
1204, retaken by the Greeks 1261, and fell under 
Mussulman sway on the 29th of May, 1453, occu¬ 
pies a most prominent position among the nations 
of the world. It is the central city of the Old 
World, being advantageously situated towards 
Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Russians have 
a traditional belief that whatever Christian power 
will reign in Constantinople shall rule the world. 
The triangular peninsula on which it stands, 
about eight miles in circumference, bounded by 
the Sea of Marmora, the Bosporus, and the 
Golden Horn, and having its southeastern angle 
pointing to Asia, was chosen by Constantine on 
account of its isolation and security. Constanti¬ 
nople preserved the remnants of ancient civiliza¬ 
tion during all the dark days of the barbarian 
invasions from the North and the Mohammedan 
aggressions from the South; and having sent, 










The Byzantine Greeks. 


81 


through the returning Crusaders, its invaluable 
treasures to the West, slowly swooned away to its 
death. 

The subjects of the vast Byzantine Empire 
were stamped with the Asiatic seal of effeminacy, 
the African mark of affluent luxury, and the Gre¬ 
cian brand of subtlety, fervor, intelligence, and 
refinement. The fire of Northern valor might at 
times be made to glow among the elements of 
Byzantine character; but it burned only spas¬ 
modically and at long distances. The Byzantine 
Greeks served as a chain between the civilization 
of the Old Roman world—that is, the civilization 
of Egypt, Greece, and Rome—and the civiliza¬ 
tion of our time. Constantinople served as, and. 
naturally has been, the guardian city of the Holy 
Land ; and to Constantinople we are indebted for 
a long line of ecclesiastical literature at a time 
when Rome and Western Europe were oppressed 
by the turbulence of the barbarians. The light 
of Christianity and civilization burned at the same 
time on the altar of ocean-guarded Ireland and 
on the triangular peninsular promontory of the 
Golden Horn. And when Ireland and Constan¬ 
tinople had run their course and fulfilled their 
mission on behalf of the human race, th.e Danes 
attempted to put out the lamp of faith in Ireland 
from 798 to 1014, and the Mohammedans extin- 


82 


Ireland among the Nations. 


guished it at Constantinople in the year 1453 . 
The downfall of Caesar’s city in the East, the 
New Rome, was effected by the vices, effeminacy, 
and duplicity of the Byzantine Greeks. New 
Rome broke faith with Old Rome in 1439, at t ^ ie 
Council of Florence. New Rome was no more in 
1453 ; but Old Rome still rules the world. A 
mixture of subtlety with intelligence, of pride 
with inefficiency, of vanity, pomp, and assertion 
with weakness, hollowness, and duplicity, formed 
peculiar traits in the character of the Byzantine 
Greeks. 

Yet, with all their follies, we have a reverence 
for the Greeks; we can hallow their memorials, 
and we desiderate their resurrection. We hope 
they may soon recover their long-lost possessions ; 
we shall joy to see St. Sophia guarded by a 
sacred band, their churches recovered, and the 
“ sick man ” sent away in peace. Let the colos¬ 
sal Cossack Empire come and drive out the mil¬ 
lion of miserable Turks who tyrannize over nine 
millions of Greeks in Europe. What is a Byzan¬ 
tine Greek ? Every member of the Greek Church, 
which to-day numbers eighty millions of souls. 
Ho ! for the Cossack to Constantinople ! 


CHAPTER XIV. 


THE ENGLISHMAN OF TO-DAY AT HOME. 

F vast wealth, if almost boundless do¬ 
minion, both by land and sea, if the 
obedience of many nations and scores 
of millions of men, should make a peo¬ 
ple proud, then the English ought to be a proud 
race. If brave men, crafty and intellectual states¬ 
men, men of eminence in science, and society, and 
life, men of light and leading in politics, com¬ 
merce, and war, should cause a people to be vain, 
vain, then, should be the English nation. If a 
splendid country, bedecked with domains, and 
clothed with splendid vegetation and verdure, 
and overspread with factories, and mines, and edu¬ 
cational institutions, and intersected with a net¬ 
work of railroads, and surrounded with an ocean 
ploughed with ships of war and commerce, should 
make a country haughty and insolent, England is 
that countryAnd the English are, at once, a 
proud, vain, haughty, and insolent people. There 
is, further, a pampered set of people, called the 
aristocracy, whose pride is lifted up to the skies, 
and whose vanity swclleth infinitely into space, 









84 Ireland among the Nations . 

and whose haughtiness looketh down on the tall 
cedars of Libanus, and whose insolence is as a 
wall of brass. They devour the substance of the 
people, and dream that they are of a purer blood 
and a higher caste than the mass of human kind. 
They are gorged with the carrion of iniquity, and 
fancy that they belong to a high and holy family. 
Drunk with the blood of nations and the sweat 
of the English masses, they have remained an eye¬ 
sore among nations, and a remnant of the filth 
which the revolutions of ages have not yet wiped 
away. 

But the vast mass of the English nation is a 
mighty multitude of toil, self-reliance, patience, 
and endurance. The prevailing element in an 
Englishman’s character is a selfishness that seeks 
the things appertaining to one’s self. And united 
with this is a self-respect and self-reliance which 
are the father and mother of self-importance, 
if not haughtiness. But the English people at 
home are candid, frank to bluntness, unforgetful 
of their words, promises, and contracts, truthful 
when self-interest does not interfere, and bounti¬ 
ful when self-safety is secured. The brains of 
the average Englishman are solid and sensible 
rather than brilliant and intellectual; his will is 
firm and defiant, but, when broken, knows no 
resurrection ; his imagination is of a combinative 


The Englishman at Home . 85 

and imitative rather than a creative nature ; his 
sensitive faculties are dull and torpid except to 
the touch of self; his memory is deep, dark, and 
retentive ; and his moral qualities are just, judg¬ 
ing, and unelastic. In frame, the Englishman is 
a medium between the German and Caledonian, 
with blue eyes, fair hair, rounded, straight-cut fea¬ 
tures, and a disposition to sanguineness and flatu¬ 
lency. In social qualities, he is a medium be¬ 
tween the Scotchman and the American ; and in 
one thing he beats the Irishman—that is, his 
power of drinking and keeping the peace. 

- It is not strange that a nation of the foregoing 
types of men should have risen to power and 
kept it; should have amassed wealth and retained 
it ; should have built up a great country and 
proudly lived in it ; should have acquired a 
mighty empire and consolidated it. Once the 
iron grasp of England was felt on a people, strong 
should be the pressure to unloose it; for English 
greed knew not how to forego its gains, and Eng¬ 
land’s army was the harbinger and servant of 
England’s merchants. Yet with all their toil, 
their selfishness, their pomp, and their hardly 
earned gains, the English character has a bright 
and beautiful side. Since the day an Irish con¬ 
vention of laity and clergy set their Saxon slaves 
at liberty, I do not know of a grander spectacle 


86 Ireland among the Nations.. 

tlian the payment of twenty million pounds (one 
hundred million dollars) by the toiling masses 
of England to set the slaves of the West Indian 
Isles at liberty. The darkest side of English 
character is on the part of the aristocracy and 
rulers ; the fairest and best, on the part of the 
yeomanry and laboring classes. The Saxons and 
Celts were once friends and fellow-missionaries, 
and it may be that republican principles may 
x heal the wounds of ages, and put an end to aspe¬ 
rities which had been fomented for political and 
religious purposes. This is the greatest danger 
to the political and clerical aristocracy of Eng¬ 
land. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD. 

HAT deep, dark stains have been 
branded into the English name for 
the acts of England’s rulers in foreign 
lands ! How often, too, have these 
dark and inhuman deeds remained an unheard- 
of mystery to the English nation ! Would not 
English matrons have stayed the hands of a bru¬ 
tal, and ferocious, and fanatical soldiery, had they 
known the barbarous and unheard-of crimes their 
brothers, and sons, and husbands were perpetrat¬ 
ing in a foreign land? ’Tis hard to answer no. 
Yet such is the lust of power, and the greed for 
gold, and the darkness of prejudice, that they 
have changed nations as well as individuals into 
fiery fanatics, and raging fiends, and remorseless 
demoniacs. The British Empire is a huge edifice 
of iniquity built of human bones and cemented 
with human blood upon the ruins of trampled 
nations. Every vale, and hill, and stream, and 
hamlet in Ireland has some.tale to tell of English 
outrage and perfidy. A land of saints and sages 
was made again and again a land of desolation 









88 Ireland among the Nations. 

V 

and an astonishment and by-word among nations. 
The Declaration of Independence and the two 
Anglo-American wars have stated the story of 
America’s woes to the whole world ; and their 
success has been the rudest shock ever given to 
English national life. The acquisition of India, 
the deeds of Warren Hastings, the Sepoy war, 
and the whole system of government taxation 
and oppression have been a crying shame before 
the eyes of the human family. Russia stands at 
Khiva, gazing into India through nature’s gates 
in the refts of the mighty Hindoo Koosh. The 
extermination of the native races in Africa and 
Oceanica, the transportation of African and Irish 
slaves to America, the raising of race against 
race and nation against nation in Europe, the in¬ 
terminable fomenting of internal strife in Europe 
and America, are written in letters of light before 
nations, and cfy to heaven for vengeance against 
the only relic of feudal barbarity now existing in 
-Western Europe, The English aristocracy de¬ 
serves the stern justice of the old Hebraic law. 
Cut it down, and throw its trunk into the open 
air. Cry aloud and call together the birds of the 
air and the dogs of the forest, that the dogs may 
be filled with the carrion of kings, and ravens 
may peck the eyes of dukes, and earls, and lords, 


The Englishman Abroad. 89 

and worms have homes in their bones. Spare 
the English people, O Lord ! for, had they known 
better, they would not have tortured the races 
and nations of the earth. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THE FRENCHMAN AT HOME. 

INCE the days when the philosophers 
of ancient Greece and the rulers of 
ancient Rome endeavored to absorb 
the individual in the state, there has 
not been a nation so completely successful in 
swamping the individual as the “ Grand Nation ” 
of France. Whatever he enters into—and every¬ 
thing he enters into he does so with an intense 

o 

energy—must first of all be for France. If it is 
war/, it must redound to the glory or aggrandize¬ 
ment of France ; if it is religion, it must be the 

* , 

national religion, or what he conceives to be the 
national religion. Thus all France is incorporated 
like the limbs of a human body, so that, if one 
member rejoices, all the members rejoice with it ; 
and if one member suffer, all the members suffer. 
The provinces, cities, and towns have their gra¬ 
dated and understood relative importance in the 
national economy. This produces such a feeling 
in the French mind that all France looks upon 
the loss of a French province as an amputation 
of the French body, for which there must be 





The Frenchman at Home. 


9i 


either restitution or substitution. It is no won¬ 
der that the enthusiastic Frenchman looks on 
France as beautiful—the land of his love, his 
fatherland, his church, his household, and home. 
And in that France of his affections, what a 
charming being the Frenchman is—cheery, buoy¬ 
ant, hospitable, loquacious, irrepressible ! There 
is content, comfort, happiness, and independence 
in society of all grades and everywhere. The 
street-sweeper does not sweep the streets of a. 
city, but so many yards or feet of his fatherland. 
Not less remarkable than the homogeneity of 
France is its steady and stern adherence to prin¬ 
ciple. France is the only nation I know of to 
take up arms for a speculative theory. It would 
almost declare war to prove the truth of a mathe¬ 
matical problem, could it but discern a principle 
involved. And yet this intelligent, mathematical, 
excitable, and impressionable people has been the 
friend of oppressed nationalities the world over. 
They stood bravely by Washington, and have 
left the names of Lafayette and Rochambeau as 
household words to Americans. Many a time 
they fought and bled on Irish soil for luckless 
Ireland. There has never been an oppressed 
nationality that did not have the sons of France 
fighting in its ranks. Thus, through all its glories 
and disasters—and their name is legion—France 


92 Ireland among the Nations . 

has followed the roa'd of principle. In its tri¬ 
umphs it was generous, in its disasters it mani¬ 
fested a superhuman elasticity. Napoleon the 
Great could have wiped out Prussia from the 
map of Europe. Did not the Jews suffer perse¬ 
cution for eighteen hundred years, until the 
magic wand of France t.ouched them, and they 
heard a voice of the mighty man crying, “ Awake 
as French citizens, and be free for evermore ” ? 

But what does the world owe to France ? 
France is the teacher of civilization. In social 
life, the scientific world, political creeds, and even 
religious revolutions, she leads the nations blind¬ 
folded. A few years ago, the monarch of France 
surrendered his sword to an invader, and met an 
angry but disorganized nation. . Resistance was 
ineffectual. To-day France maintains a trium¬ 
phant republic that is a menace to every throne 
in Europe. As it has been in the past, so may it 
be in the future. France! la belle France! go 
ahead, and reign ! 


CHAPTER XVII. 


THE FRENCHMAN ABROAD. 

HERE are three things that individual¬ 
ize the Frenchman outside of France 
—wherever he is, he associates with 
fellow-Frenchmen, and endeavors to 
build up a new France; he conciliates the respect 
of foreigners among whom he lives ; and he never 
forgets the land of his birth. Frenchmen fol- 
lowed the basins of the two great streams on the 
North American continent, and seemed to have 
held it within their hold ; but their power and 
customs went down before the colonies from 
Great Britain and Ireland. Canada still remains 
as a new France. In Asia and in Africa, they 
have been likewise superseded by the power of 
Great Britain and Ireland. The French seem to 
have had more success in introducing themselves 
to the aborigines ; but the overwhelming prepon¬ 
derance of England on the ocean has left France 
almost without colonies. Wherever the French 
settle, they are welcome visitors, as refinement, 
civilization, intelligence, and the amenities of life 
are sure to follow in their train. They are polite, 








94 


Ireland among the Nations . 


patriotic, and retain the language, customs, memo¬ 
ries, and social proprieties of their fatherland with 
an affectionate recollection and observance till the 
day of their death. Then homeward their eyes 
turn, and their last sigh is “ la belle France ,” or a 
prayer in the language of “ la Grande Nation 


\ 


/ 








CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE GERMAN. 

HAT EVER had been said of the Ger¬ 
mans before Sadowa and Sedan, it is 
certain that the triumphs of the Ger¬ 
man race over the Austrian and French 
Empires have had a wonderful influence on the 
German people throughout the whole world. It 
is true that they inherited liberty, valor, and inde¬ 
pendence from the days of the ancient Germans ; 
but the energy and effectiveness of the Germans 
had been enfeebled by the feudalism, Caesarism, 
and politico-ecclesiastical conflicts of the middle 
ages, and its solidarity had been so annihilated 
by the victories of the great Napoleon that it re¬ 
quired the discomfiture and downfall of the Third 
Napoleon to awaken a long-dormant Germany. 
German poets, patriots, and statesmen have been 
sighing for the unity of Germany, and it has been 
reserved for our age to witness its fulfilment. 
I have no sympathy with the revived German 
Empire, for it is a gigantic tyranny, a colossal and 
unmitigated feudalism without a restrictive Papal 
power; and while, as an American citizen, I cannot 








g 6 Ireland among the Nations . 

chant paeans over a colossal fraud and an intoler¬ 
ant, remorseless monster of power in the very 
heart of Europe, yet I do rejoice to see the 
power of the countless petty princes broken, and 
the German people standing in the morning of a 
new day of national life. Men should have some¬ 
thing else to do besides spending their lives in 
armies to crush out the liberties and conscience 
of a noble race. It would be well for Germany 
to look across the Rhine, and see the light which 
shines from beyond the range of the Vosges. 
Could she not live without the pageant of em¬ 
peror, kings, princes, and a multitudinous standing 
army, to make a mockery of the lives, liberties, 
and properties of her own children ? Has the 
Republic of France made no appeal to the hard 
manhood and practical common sense of the great 
German race ? It is better for the children of 
Schiller and Goethe, of Leibnitz and Kant, and 
Mendelssohn, to cultivate philology and philoso¬ 
phy, science, and music, and poetry, in peace, than 
to devote their attention to the Krupp guns of 
Kaiser Wilhelm. The Germans are a brave, quiet, 
and persevering people, and make up by patient 
dint for their slowness and stolidity. A unity of 
language has bound them into a kind of nation 
within a nation in this country, so that of all the 
races they are among the slowest to be natural- 


The German . 


97 


ized. They are remarkable for their industry, and 
the unity and allegiance with which they cling to 

each other. It is almost incredible what an 

■ 

enormous amount of lager-beer saloons they sup¬ 
port in this country, and it is astounding what 
an extraordinary amount of beer is consumed. 
They talk a great deal, but seldom fight. Though 
the Irish have filled the towns and country-houses 
of New England, it is strange that the Yankees 
have never given the Germans scarcely standing- 
room. Their course appears to be westward, 
where they can find cheap lands, and thus satisfy 
an amazing cupidity for the ownership of real 
estate. One finds the pioneer of the far West 
an American or an Irishman, among bears and 
Indians ; while safely in the distance a German 
saloon-keeper awaits the return of the adven¬ 
turers to deal out drinks, collect the money, and 
attend to real estate. It surpasses belief how 
cheaply they can live, and it is incomprehensible 
how tenaciously they can hold on to money. 
The Americans and Irish trade with all nationali¬ 
ties alike ; but the Germans, with a wonderful 
patience, make out some way of trading only 
with each other. The Americans and Irish 
make more money and spend more money 
than the Germans; but it is unimaginable how 
‘ much money the Germans receive from the 


98 Ireland among the Nations. 


Americans and Irish, and never return anything 
in any appreciable way. The German family leads 
a very domesticated life ; and, outside of Ger¬ 
man Catholics, scarcely any one of them thinks 
of going to church on Sundays. It has been said 
by some people that the majority of the Ger- 
manico-American element of our population 
would like to do away with the Sabbath, that 
they could pursue trade and commerce for three 
hundred and sixty-five days uninterruptedly. I 
do not believe it, because it is very surprising 
what a great multitude of Germans gather together 
at their lager-beer gardens on Sunday, and put on 
their spectacles to look at plays and music-play¬ 
ers. Some, too, assert that German is to be the 
language of the courts and of the schools ; but I 
have no belief in the matter, since it is the opi¬ 
nion of some that the first American generation 
will not continue to speak German, even when 
whipped by the parents, as experience has 
proved. In voting, the Germans go in a solid 
mass, and sometimes, as in Chicago, New York, 
and other cities, obtain control of the city offices 
on account of divisions in the voting of Ameri¬ 
cans and Irish. The Germans seem to like this 
country to make money in, but they prefer Ger¬ 
many ; for they endeavor to build up a new Ger¬ 
many in this land. They must multiply very 


The German . 


99 


quickly, since they have large families and very 
few of them die, the husband performing nearly 
all the duties of the wife. To conclude, the 
American Germans are going to be a patient, 
powerful, progressive, and independent people 
in this country, because they live at European 
prices, and earn American wages. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THE ITALIAN. 

ICH are the Italian’s traits of char¬ 
acter? Versatility and profundity of 
thought, quickness in conception, en¬ 
thusiasm and vehemence in execution, 
and resignation in disappointment. From the 
irascible and exaggerative temper of the Italian 
nature, it oftentimes falls into defects which colder 
and more phlegmatic races foresee and avoid. 
The Italian may be wild and imaginative, calm 
and contemplative, cool and plotting, meek and 
saintly, fiery and vengeful, cowardly or daring, 
awed into silence and submission, or roused into 
desperation. Like a firecracker, he may be ig¬ 
nited and exploded, or, by drenching, rendered 
inexplosive. He is of all races an animated, 
loquacious, impassioned, impressionable, and ges¬ 
ticulating being. What is his history ? Italian 
history reminds me of Italian skies. At one time, 
the air is dark with thunder-storms and surcharged 
with lightning; the clouds break, and the deluge 
comes. At another time, Italian national life is 
like the calm, cloudless, sublime canopy of the 






The Italian. 


IOI 


Italian heavens. Then, again, Italian history at 
times brings to my mind the illumined horizon 
of an Italian sunset. Italian history presents as 
many hues as there are expressions on the Italian 
countenance. The national life of Italy has been 
one of glory and shame, of light and darkness, of 
sorrow and joy, of triumph and likewise of de¬ 
gradation. What has the Italian done in the reli¬ 
gious, social, and political world? In the reli¬ 
gious world, the chair of Peter always made Italy a 
shining sun ; in the social world, Italy has always 
stood high ; and in the political world, Italy has 
presented a shifting chaos. What is the rank of 
Italy in science, history, philosophy, poetry, archi¬ 
tecture, industry, and the fine arts ? Let Galileo 
stand for science, let Baronius stand for history, 
let St. Thomas stand for philosophy, let Dante 
stand for poetry, and let Michael Angelo stand 
for architecture. In industrial pursuits, Italy is 
behind many other nations ; but in the fine arts 
and all their ramifications, Italy presents a mea¬ 
sureless cloud of splendid names. The national 
life of Italy and the history of the Papacy are so 
interwoven and so interpenetrate each other as to 
be inseparable. God holds that land of changes 
in his hand, and may hereafter manifest his will 
in such a way as to make it unmistakable. 


* 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE SPANIARD. 

IGNIFIED reserve and tenacity of pur¬ 
pose form the corner-stone of the 
Spanish character. No nation has 
shed such rivers of blood as the Span¬ 
ish, both in foreign warfare and internal strife. 
Not to mention minor wars, there were three 
which seem to have moulded the national charac¬ 
ter. It took the Romans two hundred years to 
subdue Spain. Spain fought against the Moors 
for nearly eight hundred years, and expelled them 
in 1492 ; and every one is acquainted with the 
prolonged and successful resistance of Spain 
during the Peninsular War, which led to the 
downfall of the great Napoleon. The great 
glory of Spain was the discovery and coloniza¬ 
tion of the New World, which became a home 
for the oppressed of all nations. The year 1492 
is more glorious for Spain on account of the 
exploits of Columbus than by reason of the expul¬ 
sion of the Moors or Saracens. In navigation, 
commerce, arts, sciences, martial glory, and poli¬ 
tical influence, Spain has stood in the foremost 






The Spaniard . 


103 


rank of nations. In the days of the “ Invincible 
Armada ” she was the first. The loss of her colo¬ 
nies, continuous intestine wars, and autocratic 
principalities, as seeds of discord, have brought 
untold calamities on the Spanish people. Spain 
has been the last European country to assume a 
republican form of government, and calls up the 
fact that, while Latin races and Catholic peo¬ 
ples are nearly all republican at present, Teutonic 
races and Protestant nations have become more 
anti-republican in form. From time immemorial, 
a close intimacy of race, affections, character, and 
religion has existed between the Irish and Span¬ 
ish races. There is a close resemblance of the 
physique and habits of the inhabitants of Con¬ 
naught with those of the Spaniard. The Span¬ 
iards are impetuous and patient, dignified and 
friendly, frugal, and fiery, and warlike. 


CHAPTER XXI. 


OTHER EUROPEAN RACES OF TO-DAY. 

SHALL not, for want of space, enter 
so much at length into the character¬ 
istics of other races, because I must 
keep room for the Irish race, the main 
subject of this book ; because other races may be 
traced to and classified with some of those already 
mentioned; and because their history has had lit¬ 
tle or nothing to do with that of the Irish people. 
Of European races, the modern Greeks may be 
ascribed to the-category of the Byzantine Greeks. 
Like them, they are fond of show, ease, and plea¬ 
sure ; vain, indolent, and unscrupulous. The 
Poles resemble the Old Teutons, with the super- 
added notion of national despondency and gloom. 
The Hungarians and other subjects of the 
Austrian Empire retain the character of the 
stocks from which they come. The longer the 
Turks live, the lazier and more worthless they 
grow. Their civilization is effete, ancient Arab 
energy is dead, and as a race they ‘look like 
autumn leaves. Let them perish. Sensuality, 
indolence, and despotism have ruined them. The 





Other European Races of To-day. 105 

Danes and Scandinavians still maintain the man¬ 
hood and activity of their forefathers, but with¬ 
out their cruelty, ferociousness, and marauding 
habits. The Swiss are a brave, hardy, educated, 
hospitable, and independent people. But every 
European country of our day is almost over¬ 
shadowed by Russia, which runs like a vast moun¬ 
tain range from the frigid to the torrid zone, and 
casts the shadows of its peaks on the shores of 
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The emancipa¬ 
tion of Russian serfs, the introduction of tele¬ 
graphs and railroads, the elevation of the Russian 
standard of education, are giving greater con¬ 
solidation to the Empire of all the Russias , and 
making it the first power on the globe. A con¬ 
test must yet be waged between the East and 
West of Europe greater than that which took 
place between the North and South of the United 
States. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE INHABITANTS OF ASIA. 

SIA is the largest of all the continents 
in area, the strangest in its peculia¬ 
rities, the first in population, and the 
most ancient in its history. It is at 
once the birthplace of the human family, the 
mother of religions and philosophies, and the 
parent of human society and civilization. Asia 
is a land of wonders in its physical geography, in 
its populations, and in its religions. In its phy¬ 
sical structure, Asia may be characterized as a 
flat country, though it is intersected by the most 
stupendous mountain chains in the world, irri¬ 
gated with ocean rivers, and covered with im¬ 
mense lowlands and almost boundless plateaus. 
Four mighty mountain ranges run through Cen¬ 
tral Asia, almost parallel to the equator. The 
Himalaya chain, which consists of the Hindoo 
Koosh, the Imaus, and the mountains of Assam, 
extend in a line of eighteen hundred miles, and 
interpose their awful gorges and eternally snow- 
crowned peaks between the peninsulas of South¬ 
ern Asia and its vast central table-lands. Some- 

106 






The Inhabitants of Asia . 


107 


times tremendous fissures and ravines occur in 

this mountain-chain, through which rivers and 

torrents rush with unimaginable fury. Then 

there is, nearly parallel to the Himalayan range, 

the line of the Altai Mountains, the line of the 

Celestial Mountains, and the line of the Kuen- 

lun. Some of the largest rivers on the globe roll 

over the surface of Asia. On the southern coast, 

they flow into the Indian Ocean ; in the northern 

lands, they wind over the steppes of Siberia to 

the Arctic Ocean ; and in the east they meander 

through the Flowery Kingdom to the shores of 

the Pacific. The table-lands of Asia are on the 

♦ 

same gigantic scale as its mountains and rivers. 
The plains of Iran, Thibet, Taxila, Malwah, 
Deccan, Mysore, Ischim, and Baraba cover mil¬ 
lions and millions of square miles, and are several 
thousand feet above the level of the sea. To 
these must be added the great deserts of the Great 
Gobi, Irak-Ajimi, Kizil Koom, Khiva, and many 
in Afghanistan, Hindoostan, Thibet, and Arabia, 
whicli occupy many hundred thousands of square 
miles. There are, also, steppes, thousands of 
square miles in area, far below the level of the sea. 
The vegetation and zoology of Asia are no less 
marvellous; and the climate is known to range in 
the same place from the most intense cold known 
in winter on the surface of the globe to the most 


ig8 Ireland ani 07 ig the Nations . 

scorching and intolerable heat in summer. Ar¬ 
mies have been known- to have perished during 
winter in the land of the Kirghiz, and eggs may 
be roasted with the summer sun on the Kirghiz 
sandy plains. 

What shall we say of the inhabitants of such a 
continent, numbering four hundred and eighty 
millions of human beings, and speaking nine 
hundred and thirty-seven languages ? The Cau¬ 
casian race claims one hundred and sixty-four 
millions of people in Asia ; the Mongolian, two 
hundred and ninety-one ; the Malay, twenty- 
four ; and the Ethiopian, one. This huge aggre¬ 
gate of races may be divided into two elements 
—a changeable element and a changeless one. 
The peoples which have inhabited Central Asia, 
east of Russia to the confines of China, and 
south of Siberia to the Himalaya mountains, 
have been always a restless, warlike, ferocious, 
nomadic, and indomitable population, an endless 
source of trouble to Europe, China, and India. 
The races of Southern and Eastern Asia have 
been a settled, populous, and passive people. 
While the Kirghiz Kazak lives on horse-flesh and 
kamys, or mare’s milk, the staple food of the 
Hindoo and Chinaman is rice. The sedentary 
populations of Asia have been subject, from 
time immemorial, to the most remorseless despot- 


The Inhabitants of Asia. 


109 


isms of emperors, kings, rajahs, nizams, shahs, 
and Brahmins, and overladen and weighed down 
to the earth by the doctrines of caste and fatal¬ 
ity ; but the Tartar spirit breathed the free air 
of the elevated plain, and was restrained by its 
tribal relations only. The tyrant-ridden races 
of Asia erected astounding and unparallelled 
works, such as the great wall of China and the 
religious structures of Hindoostan ; but from the 
western flow of the free Tartar tribes arose 
mighty nations, which are to-day the umpires 
of the human race. 

Religion forms the foundation-stone of the 
Asiatic character. The laws, the institutions, 
the customs, and the characteristics of Asiatic 
races are the outgrowths of their religious sys¬ 
tems. Of the Mohammedan creed I have al¬ 
ready spoken; and in this place I shall direct the 
reader’s attention to the doctrines of Zoroaster, 
Confucius, Brahminism, and Buddhism. The re¬ 
ligion of Zoroaster is contained in the “ Zend 
Avesta,” which was first published in French by 
Monsieur du Perron, at Paris, A.D. 1771. It is 
founded on the intrinsic difference between right 
and wrong; the freedom of the individual to 
battle for what is right; the providence of Or- 
mazd, the Supreme Being; and personal holiness 
acquired in the struggle for truth, justice, right 


11 o Ireland among the Nations . 

The doctrines of Zoroaster are embodied in the 
hymns, prayers, invocations, and thanksgivings 
which compose the “ Zend Avesta” I shall quote 
some passages from the “Avesta.” Zarathustra 
(Zoroaster) says : “ I worship and adore the 
Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), 
full of light! I worship the seven archangels or 
protecting spirits ! I worship the primal Bull, 
the soul of Bull! I invoke thee, O Fire! thou 
son of Ormazd, most rapid of the immortals! I 
invoke Mithra, the lofty, the immortal, the pure, 
the sun, the ruler, the quick Horse, the eye of 
Ormazd! I invoke the holy Szaosha, gifted with 
holiness, and Raqnu (Spirit of Justice), and Arstat 
(Spirit of Truth) ! ” 

A PRAYER OF ZOROASTER, 

“ I desire by my prayer, with uplifted hands, 
this joy ; the pure works of the. holy spirit, 
Mazda, a disposition to perform good actions ; 
and pure gifts 'from both worlds, the bodily and 
spiritual.” 

AN INVOCATION OF ZOROASTER. 

“ In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich 
in love, I invoke the name of Ormazd, the God 
with the name who always nvas, always }is, and 
always will be ; the heavenly amongst the hea- 


The Inhabitants of Asia . 


111 


venly, with the name from whom alone is derived 
rule ! Ormazd is the greatest ruler, mighty, 
wise, creator, supporter, refuge, defender, com¬ 
pleter of good works, overseer, pure, good, and 
just.” 


THANKSGIVING OF ZOROASTER. 

“ Offering and praise to the Lord, completer 
of good wor^s, who made man greater than all 
earthly beings, and through the gift of speech 
created them to rule the creatures, as warriors 
against the Daevas (evil spirits). All praise to 
the creator, Ormazd, the all-wise, mighty, rich 
in might; to the seven Amshaspands (the seven 
archangels) ; to Zed Bahram, the victorious anni- 
hilator of foes.” 

A PATET, OR CONFESSION OF ZOROASTER. 

“ I repent of all sins. All wicked thoughts, 
words, and works which I have meditated in 
the world, corporal, spiritual, earthly, and hea¬ 
venly, I repent of in your presence, ye believers. 
O Lord ! pardon through the three words! 

“I praise the best purity. I hunt away the 
Devs. I am thankful for the good of the cre¬ 
ator, Ormazd; with the opposition and un¬ 
righteousness which come from Gana-mainyo, am 
I contented and agreed in the hope of the resur- 


I I 2 


Ireland among the Nations . 


rection.. The Zarathustrian law created by Or- 
mazd I take as a plummet. For the sake of this 
way I repent of all sins. 

“ The sins against father, mother, sister, bro¬ 
ther, wife, child, against spouses, against the 
superiors, against my own relations, against those 
living with me, against those who possess equal 
property, against the neighbors, against the in¬ 
habitants of the same town, against servants, 
every unrighteousness through which I have been 
amongst sinners—of these sins repent I with 
thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as spiritual, 
earthly as heavenly, with the three words. Par¬ 
don, O Lord ! I repent of sins.” 

The religion of Confucius, like that of his 
countryman, Lao-tse, is remarkable for a high 
and far-reaching morality. All the duties of life 
are laid down very accurately, and the obliga¬ 
tions of each state are defined with great minute¬ 
ness. The spirit which permeates Confucianism is * 
a deep veneration for society and unbounded 
respect for antiquity. The laws and traditions 
of the past are looked up to with a religious and 
national awe, and, being interwoven with the 
daily habits of Chinese life, are maintained with 
an unswerving and unrelaxed energy. Conser¬ 
vatism is the main trait of the religious and na¬ 
tional life in China and all the Turanian offshoots. 


The Inhabitants of Asia . 113 

The great religion of Hindoostan is Brahmin- 
ism—a religion closely allied with Zoroastrianism. 
Its doctrines are contained in the Vedas, of which 
there are four : the Rig-veda, the Yagur-veda, the 
Sama-veda, and the Atharva-veda. The laws of 
Manu, which are supposed to have been written 
between 1200 B.C. and 700 B.C., describe the life, 
duties, and offices of the Brahmins. In all Brah- 
minism the great idea is that of caste. The 
caste doctrine has lain upon the Hindoo nations 
like a nightmare through thousands of years, and 
to it may be traced their degradation, pusillani¬ 
mity, and helplessness in the presence of in¬ 
vaders. 

Too much credit cannot be given the great 
Buddha for lifting up from hundreds of millions 
of human beings the heavy and paralyzing weight 
of caste. Though he was decorated with prince¬ 
ly honors, he renounced all, and devoted an ex¬ 
alted and highly serviceable life to the cause of 
the pariah, the poor, and the slave. There is 
something almost divine in the sublime humanity 
of Buddhism. Buddha states the doctrine of love 
in his “ Dhammapada,” or Path of Virtue, thus: 
“ ‘ He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, 
he robbed me ’—hatred in those who harbor such 
thoughts will never cease. 4 He abused me, he 
beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me ’—hatred 


114 Ireland -among the Nations. 


in those who do not harbor such thoughts will 
cease. For hatred does not cease by hatred at 
any time ; hatred ceases by love. This is an old 
rule.” The “ Dhammapada ” places the attain¬ 
ment of the Nirvana, or highest happiness, in re¬ 
flection, thoughtfulness, and contemplation ; sets 
forth many warnings against Mara, the tempter ; 
condemns sinful thoughts, words, and actions ; 
denounces foolishness, injustice, and inactivity; 
and speaks of impurity and ignorance in these 
words : “ Make thyself an island ; work hard ; be 
wise ! When thy impurities are blown away, and 
thou art free from guilt, thou wilt not enter again 
into birth and decay. Let a wise man blow off 
the impurities of his soul as a smith blows off the 
impurities of silver—one by one, little by little, 
and from time to time. Impurity arises from the 
iron, and, having risen from it, destroys it; thus 
do a transgressor’s own works lead him to the 
evil path. The taint of prayers is non-repetition; 
the taint of houses is non-repair; the taint of 
the body is sloth ; the taint of the watchman 
thoughtlessness. Bad conduct is the taint of a 
woman; greediness of a benefactor; tainted are 
all evil ways in this world and the next. But 
there is a taint worse than all taints. Ignorance 
is the greatest taint. He who destroys life, who 
speaks-untruth, who takes in this world what is 


The Inhabitants of Asia. 115 

not given him, who takes another man’s wife, and 
the man who gives himself to drinking intoxi¬ 
cating liquors, he, even in this world, digs up his 
own root.” 

To be sure, the rust and crust of ages have 
gathered round the grand doctrines of Zoroaster, 
Confucius, Brahma, and Buddha; but we see 
that in the vast religious literature of the Orient, 
many hundred times more voluminous than that 
of the Christians, there is a splendid foundation 
on which to build the Christian edifice. Two- 
thirds of the human family are yet outside of 
the Christian fold; and all good men will pray 
that men may see a reunited Christendom, and 
the millions of the heathen hastening to its stan¬ 
dard. O Asia ! the land of the marvellous, when 
shall the day arrive to unbar the gates of light, 
and to give manhood to the Hindoo, energy to 
the Chinaman, civilization to the Tartar, pros¬ 
perity and security to the Persian, and the Chris¬ 
tian faith, sacrifice, and sacraments to thy be¬ 
nighted millions ? The civilization of America is 
moving towards Asia with the rising sun, and 
from Russia and the west Christianity is advanc¬ 
ing with ocean power. May their concentrated 
glories soon shine over the land of Shem ! 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


T1IE INHABITANTS OF AFRICA—THE NEGRO, THE 
INDIAN, THE POLYNESIAN. 

FRICA is the land of the unknown. 
Its vast deserts of shifting sand, its 
impenetrable jungles, its insupport¬ 
able climate, its unreclaimed wilder¬ 
nesses, its ferocious wild beasts, and the savage 
lawlessness of its society, have drawn a veil be¬ 
tween it and the gaze of civilized nations. The 
northern shore of Africa, from Suez to Mount 
Atlas, has been known for ages, and celebrated 
as a land of unsurpassed renown. Along the 
western coast of Africa, for twelve hundred miles 
on either side of the equator, there has been 
considerable intercourse between the natives and 
Europeans. The land of Ivaffraria is tolerably 
well known to the British. The eastern coast 
around Abyssinia, and south towards the Cape 
of Good Hope, is comparatively unexplored; 
while the vast body of the continent is one 
huge, waste wilderness, the home of rapacious 
beasts and untutored savages, but hitherto un¬ 
trodden by civilization. The races of Africa 








The Inhabitants of Africa. 117 

number about eighty millions, and speak about 
one hundred and fifty dialects. 

Yet Africa was the land of the Carthaginians 
and the Egyptians. Greece found its learning, 
its philosophy, its mythology, and its religion in 
Egypt. Old Egypt, proud in its wealth and 
magnificence, was still prouder as the mother of 
religions and civilizations. The Egyptians were 
skilled in astronomy, geometry, architecture, 
sculpture, painting, music, chemistry, medicine, 
anatomy, mining, and agriculture. Their pyra¬ 
mids, obelisks, colossal statues, monolithic tem¬ 
ples, and massive masonry are unsurpassed in 
age by the works of any nation, and unrivalled 
in exquisite workmanship. James Freeman 
Clarke gives the following admirable condensa¬ 
tion of old Egyptian life from Wilkinson : “ The 
oldest mural paintings disclose a state of the arts 
of civilization so far advanced as to surprise 
those who have made archaeology a study. It 
is not astonishing to find houses with doors and 
windows, with verandas, with barns for grain, 
vineyards, gardens, fruit-trees, etc. We might 
also expect, since man is a fighting animal, to 
see, as we do, pictures of marching troops, 
armed with spears and shields, bows, slings, 
daggers, axes, maces, and the boomerang; or 
to notice coats of mail, standards, war-chariots ; 


118 


Ireland among the Nations. 


or to find the assault of forts by means of scaling- 
ladders. But these ancient tombs also exhibit 
to us scenes of domestic life and manners which 
would seem to belong to the nineteenth century 
after our era, rather than to the fifteenth century 
before it. Thus we see monkeys trained to 
gather fruit from the trees in an orchard ; houses 
furnished with a good variety of chairs, tables, 
ottomans, carpets, couches, as elegant and elab¬ 
orate as any used now. There are comic and 
genre pictures of parties, where the gentlemen 
and ladies are sometimes represented as being 
the worse for wine ; of dances, where ballet-girls 
in short dresses perform very modern-looking 
pirouettes; of exercises in wrestling, games of 
ball, games of chance, like chess or checkers, of 
throwing knives at a mark, of the modern 
thimblerig, wooden dolls for children, curiously 
carved wooden boxes, dice and toy r balls. There 
are men and women playing on harps, flutes, 
pipes, cymbals, trumpets, drums, guitars, and 
tambourines. Glass was, till recently, believed 
to be a modern invention unknown to the 
ancients. But we find it commonly used as 
early as the age of Osertasen I., more than three 
thousand eight hundred years ago; and we have 
pictures of glass-blowing and of glass bottles as 
far back as the fourth dynasty. The best Vene- 


The Inhabitants of Africa. 119 

tian glass-workers are unable to rival some of 
the old Egyptian work; for the Egyptians could 
combine all colors in one cup, introduce gold be¬ 
tween two surfaces of glass, and finish, in glass, 
details of feathers, etc., which it now requires a 
microscope to make out. It is evident, there¬ 
fore,That they understood the use of the magni- 
fying-glass. The Egyptians also imitated suc¬ 
cessfully the colors of precious stones, and could 
even make statues, thirteen feet high, closely re¬ 
sembling an emerald. They also made mosaics 
in glass of wonderfully brilliant colors. They 
could cut glass at the most remote periods. 
Chinese bottles have also been found in pre¬ 
viously unopened tombs of the eighteenth dy¬ 
nasty, indicating commercial intercourse reaching 
as far back as that epoch. They were able to 
spin, and weave, and color cloth, and were 
acquainted with the use of mordants, the wonder 
in modern calico-printing. Pliny describes this 
process as used in Egypt, but evidently without 
understanding its nature. Writing-paper, made 
of the papyrus, is as old as the Pyramids. The 
Egyptians tanned leather and made shoes ; and 
the shoemakers, working on their benches, are 
represented exactly like ours. Their carpenters 
used axes, saws, chisels, drills, planes, rulers, 
plummets, squares, hammers,’ nails, and hones 


120 Ireland among the Nations. 

for sharpening. They also understood the use of 
glue in cabinet-making; and there are paintings 
of veneering, in which a piece of thin, dark wood 
is fastened by glue to a coarser piece of light 
wood. Their boats were propelled by sail on 
yards and masts, as well as by oars. They used 
the blow-pipe in the manufacture of gold chains 
and other ornaments. They had rings of silver 
and gold for money, and weighed it in scales of 
a careful construction. Their hieroglyphics were 
carved on the hardest granite, with a delicacy 
and accuracy which indicate the use of some me¬ 
tallic cutting-instrument, probably harder than 
our best steel. The siphon was known in the 
fifteenth century before Christ. The most singu¬ 
lar part of their costume was the wig worn by 
all the higher classes, who constantly shaved 
their heads as well as their chins, which shaving 
of the head is supposed by Herodotus to be the 
reason of the thickness of the Egyptian skull. 
They frequently wore false beards. Sandals, 
shoes, and low boots, some very elegant, are 
found in the tombs. Women wore loose robes, 
ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, armlets, anklets, 
gold necklaces. In the tombs are found vases 
for ointment, mirrors, combs, needles. Doctors 
and drugs were not unknown to them ; and the 
passport system is no modern invention, for their 


The Inhabitants of Africa. 121 

deeds contain careful description of the person, 
exactly in the style with which European travel¬ 
lers are familiar. We have mentioned only a 
small part of the customs and arts with which 
the tombs of the Egyptians show them to be 
familiar.” 

The foregoing synopsis will give the reader an 
inkling of the great extent to which we are in¬ 
debted to Africa for the comforts and luxuries of 
life. But the land of the shepherd kings and 
the Pharaos, of Origen, Augustine, and Euclid, 
is sadly changed. Its civilization has been swept 
aw T ay, and nothing but its imperishable monu¬ 
ments have withstood the devastation of tyrants 
and the desolation of ages. 

We can, however, find some rays of light pene¬ 
trating here and there this wide and gloomy con¬ 
tinent. On the north, the religion and civiliza¬ 
tion of France are spreading over Algiers ; the 
Khedive is reawakening Egypt ; and pirates have 
been suppressed along its shores. On the west, 
the Republic of Liberia, though in its infancy, 
gives promise of a grand and elevated destiny, 
even from the morn of its life. In the south, the 
sturdy colonization of the Englishman is making 
successful headway ; and, in the east, the Chris¬ 
tian powers are stretching out their strong arms 
to suppress the diabolical traffic of slavery. The 


122 Ireland among the Nations. 

* 

missionaries of the Catholic Church are in the 

» 

depths of the darkest jungles of interior Africa 
with the torch of Christian civilization. 

There are, at the present day, three outcasts 
from civilization—the negro of Africa, the Indian 
of America, and the Polynesian of the South 
Sea Islands. Notwithstanding the ferocity and 
inhumanity of the Ashantees, Dahomans, Koo- 
rankoes, and other races, the negroes of Africa 
are a kind, humane, hospitable, cheerful, and 
happy people. They have many of the finer 
qualities of civilized life, are great lovers of 
music and song, and are gifted with tendencies 
and qualities susceptible of a high social refine¬ 
ment. The Fellatahs are among the most ad¬ 
vanced tribes. No one can find in Negro-land 
the dark, savage temper of the South Sea canni¬ 
bal ; nor will any one discover the treacherous 
reserve, and proud, remorseless nature of the 
North American Indian. The low social condi¬ 
tion and the gloomy features of the negro’s 
character are surrounded with very strong exten¬ 
uating circumstances, and, when we find him 
under happier auspices in the States, we witness 
the most satisfactory results. The South Sea 
Islander, the Indian, and the negro have come 
into contact with civilization. The South Sea 
Islander and the Indian remind me of the verse 


The Inhabitants of Africa. 123 

of Buddha: “ If a fool be associated with a wise 
man all his life, he will perceive the truth as little 
as a spoon perceives the taste of soup.” On the 
other hand, the contact of the negro with civili¬ 
zation brings to my mind that other verse of Bud¬ 
dha : “ If an intelligent man be associated for one 
minute only with a wise man, he will perceive 
the truth as the tongue perceives the taste of 
soup.” Behold, what a mission for the civiliza¬ 
tion and Christianity of the world ! Though 
Ireland is only a mite among the millions in the 
races we have reviewed, let us hope that the light 
of her faith, her genius, and her knowledge will, 
as in the golden days of her history, be shed with 
splendor on the dark places of the continents and 
islands of the earth. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


THE SCOTCHMAN. 

FTER beholding the races of the 
world, we now approach the sa¬ 
cred soil of the Celt on the main¬ 
land and islands of liberty-loving 
Caledonia, and on the green hills and plains of 
ocean-leaguered Ireland. Shemitic in origin, 
blessed with the purest and noblest traditions 
of the Aryan religion, gifted with the longevity 
and conservatism of the Turanian races, glorious 
with the antiquity of the Hebrew patriarchs, 
blissful with the happiness of Brahma, pure 
with the sublime morality of Buddha, and 
lovely with an inborn and inbred natural 
beauty, the Celtic race rested in its island 
homes by the wild ocean undisturbed for 
ages and ages in its isolation. The Druidism 
of the Celts seems to have had a close con¬ 
vergence with the religion of Zoroaster, and to 
lay claim to common Vedic sources. In war 
habiliments, dresses, ornaments, and some social 
habits, there was a near approach to the Egyp- 

124 








The Scotchman . 


I2 5 


tians. The language, or rather languages (for 
there were four—one of the court, one of the 
Druids, one of the Ollamhs, and one of the 
people), was remarkable for an oriental copious¬ 
ness, a well-ordered development, a mathemati¬ 
cal precision, a poetic versatility, and an unmis¬ 
takably close affinity with the oldest tongues 
of the globe. There was in the build of the 
Celtic frame the robust vigor of the adven¬ 
turer, in the Celtic manner the vivacity of the 
East, and in the Celtic eye the fiery animation 
of the Orient. I shall, for the present, speak 
of the Caledonian, or Albanian, or Scotch branch 
of the Celtic race. % 

In looking over the configuration and physical 
features of Scotland and its islands, one will im¬ 
mediately see that it is only a hardy and heroic 
race that could grapple with the almost count¬ 
less natural difficulties which present themselves. 
The barren, inhospitable shore-line, and the 
high, beetling headlands, both on the islands 
and the mainland, together with the swift- 
flowing, angry billows of the Atlantic, are a 
formidable obstacle to navigation of all kinds 
and at all times. The rivers are short, rapid, 
and, for the most part, unfit for commercial 
purposes, except towards the estuaries. Nor¬ 
thern Scotland is overrun with mountain-chains 


126 


Ireland among the Nations. 


and dotted with mountain peaks, which present 
impenetrable barriers, and have the appearance 
of wild and uninhabitable regions. The winter 
months are sure to bring a searching cold, while 
the summer season is of uncertain tempera¬ 
ture. 

This is the country which has ^>een the home 
for thousands of years of the bravest, most in¬ 
telligent, and most independent race of which 
we have record in the annals of the world. In 
the barren crags and stormy mountains of Cale¬ 
donia the Scot was free. He looked across the 
rough ocean-river that rolled between Almha 
and Erin, and sent for centuries the message 
of freedom and friendship to the warriors of 
Ulster, his brother Dalriadians in Ireland. From 
his mountain home he saw the Roman legions 
frittered into foam at the foot of the Grampians, 
and rejoiced in his independence. The gather¬ 
ing of the clans and chieftains of Albania under 
the Maormor, Malcolm, the Lord of Moray, in 
the year 993, banished for ever the viking and 
the sea-king from Scottish homes. The great 
battle of Bannockburn established the independ¬ 
ence of Scotland under the immortal Robert 
Bruce, A.D. 1314. In this battle the Scotch 
were assisted by the Irish, according to Chaucer, 
who says : 


The Scotchman . 


127 


“ To Albion, Scots, we ne’er would-yield ; 
The Irish bowmen swept the field,” 


The accession of James VI. of Scotland to the 
English throne in 1603, and the Act of Union in 
1707, destroyed the legislative independence of 
Scotland, but left its nationality unimpaired. 
No Scotchman will admit the conquest of his 
country. He asserts that he made a good bar¬ 
gain, and, as long as it is profitable, he will abide 
by it. By stipulations in the Act of Union, the 
Court of Justiciary, or criminal court, is supreme 
in the highest sense ; and from the Court of Ses- 
-sion, or supreme civil court, there is only an ap¬ 
peal to the House of Lords. The old law of 
Scotland strictly holds in all heritable rights. 
At the present day, the Scotch members of Par¬ 
liament act in a solid body, and are never refused 

their demands in the Imperial Parliament. 

* 

The Scotch have at all times carried the spirit 
of national independence into church matters to 
a surprising extent. In the year 563, forty 
years before the landing of St. Augustine on the 
shore of Kent (603), St. Columbkill, the soldier- 
minstrel-saint of Erin, landed in Iona, and, with¬ 
in a few years, kindled on the mountain peaks of 
Scotland the united lights of the wild freedom of 
the Caledonians and the spiritual independence 


123 


Ireland among the Nations . 


of Catholicity. For a thousand years the Scots 
of Erin and the Scots of Caledon were valiant 
champions of the church and loving fellow- 
laborers through the kingdoms of Europe. 
With the Reformation a sad change came ! 
Faithful Ireland adhered to the old church, and 
Scotland rose in rebellion against monarchy and 
aristocracy in its religious system. The autho¬ 
rity of the Pope and the jurisdiction of pre¬ 
lates were overthrown as unnational, anti- 
Scotch, and anti-Christian. Unbefriended, the 
Scotch fought and conquered the power of Rome 
and the power of England. It was the spirit 
of nationality asserting itself which was brought 
into collision with the authorities of the church. 
The same spirit led to the revolt of four hundred 
and seventy-four ministers in 1843, and the 
founding of the Free Church of Scotland. At 
the time of the first rebellion, on the overthrow 
of the Papal and episcopal authority, the Scotch 
divided their country into one thousand and four¬ 
teen parishes, and established a purely republican 
constitution for the church. The Constitution 
of the United States seems to have been model¬ 
led on, and to have caught the spirit of, the 
Scotch Presbyterian organization. 

There is no part of Great Britain and Ireland 
which diffuses more thought over the kingdom 


The Scotchman. 


129 


than Scotland. As mathematicians and meta¬ 
physicians., the Scotch stand in the first rank of 
European nations; as inventors, they are rivals 
of the Americans ; as historians, they compete 
with the Italians ; in works of the imagination 
and in fiction, they are the equals of the French ; 
in speculation, they can stand comparison with 
the Germans ; and in common sense they are 
not beaten by the English. The Scotch are 
an educated, intelligent, independent, laborious, 
happy, and hospitable people. In their own 
homes, notwithstanding separation in religion 
and isolation for centuries, they have all the 
traits and peculiarities of the Irish people. 
Their love of song and dancing, their habits at 
festive enjoyments, their mirth and jokes, their 
amusements and pastimes, their clanship and 
customs, their common, ancient language, and 
a thousand other facts, imperatively stamp them 
as members of one race. When religious preju¬ 
dice disappears, they will inevitably unite, and 
rising, like a pheenix from its ashes, give birth 
to a new and a grander Celtic race. The Cath¬ 
olic Bishop of Cloyne, the Right Rev. Dr. Keane, 
in union with his clergy, has given the initiative 
in the following resolutions, which shine like a 
bright light amid the darkness of Irish poli¬ 
tics : 


130 Ireland among the Nations. 


RESOLUTIONS. 

1. That the time has arrived when the inter¬ 
ests of-our country require from us, as priests 
and as Irishmen, a public pronouncement on the 
vital question of Home Rule. 

2. That as impartial history has branded as 
unconstitutional and corrupt the means by which 
we have been deprived of our legislative inde¬ 
pendence, we regard the claim made by the 
Home Rule Association in Dublin for its resto¬ 
ration as the assertion of a true principle, and 
the vindication of an outraged right. 

3. That whilst we emphatically disclaim any 
intention of seeking separation from England, 
we would respectfully suggest, as the best means 
of giving practical effect to these views, the hold¬ 
ing of a meeting in Dublin of the representatives 
of all interested in the great question— AND THEY 
ARE THE ENTIRE PEOPLE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION 
OF CREED OR CLASS —for the purpose of placing, 
by constitutional means, on a broad and definite 
basis, the nation’s demand for the restoration of 
its plundered rights. 

Signed, on behalf of the Fermoy Conference, 
William Keane, 

D. O’ Mahon Y, V.G. and Dean. 

Signed, on behalf of the Kanturk Conference, 
P. D. O’Regan, P.P., V.G., Archdeacon. 


The Scotchman , 


131 

Signed, on behalf of the Coachford Conference, 
John Cullinane, P.P. } V.F., and Canon. 
Signed, on behalf of the Buttevant Conference, 
D. Dilworth, D.D., P.P., V.F., and Canon. 
Signed, on behalf of the Midleton Conference, 
John Fitzpatrick, P.P., V.F., and Canon. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IRISH RACE. 

LOSE by the storm-beaten mountains 
of Caledonia, or Scotia Minor, and 
within view of its shores, was an 
island which the Greeks called I erne, 
or Juverva, the Romans Plibernia, the Celts Erin 
or Eri, and, it may be, an ancient writer Ogygia. 
It was also called Scotia Major, and contained 
the greater portion of the Celtic race. The per¬ 
petual mists of the Atlantic Ocean bedecked its 
surface with a matchless green. Eri was rich 
in fruits, and flowers, and vegetation, watered 
with innumerable streams, and superabundantly 
blessed with the fat of the earth. In that 
happy western land, which the ancients deemed 
to be the last of the earth, there dwelt, in its 
Druidical or pre-Christian era, a simple, upright, 
and patriarchal people, whose religion was a sub¬ 
lime pantheism, whose government was tribal, 
and whose language, rites, laws, and manners 
were oriental. It was the Hiberno-Celtic branch 
of the first wave of the human family which rest¬ 
ed and remained unchanged, unpolluted, and un¬ 
disturbed in its island, ocean-guarded home. 

132 




Characteristics of the Irish Race . 133 

Other waves came afterwards from the great 
Iranian Centre of population, but they were 
broken in their western course on the continent, 
and never reached the western island. 

This primeval people of Eri was gifted by 
nature with wonderful endowments, and among 
all its traits there was none so marked as a deep 
and ineradicable religious instinct. Whether it 
assembled beneath the dark shadows of its 
groves, and caught only a dim and distant 
glimpse of its fire-god through the lonely vista, 
or whether it viewed with reverence the sacred 
fire of its lofty round towers, or whether it as¬ 
sembled to hear the chronicles of its bards or the 
exhortations of its Druids, it was animated, quick¬ 
ened, and directed by the idea of the unearthly, 
the supernatural, the divine. Whatever tended 
to cherish this notion was near and dear to the 
Irish heart. The wild music, the deep pathos, 
the sombre melancholy, the fiery spirit, and the 
magic genius of Irish bards and Druids had irre¬ 
sistible fascinations for the Irish race. Not less 
influential was the power of Irish chieftains, es¬ 
pecially in time of war ; for the Irish, like the 
Gauls, were always a warlike people, and, after 
the gifts of their gods, yearned for nothing so 
much as the glories of the battle-field. 

There was, besides, in the homes of the ancient 


134 Ireland among the Nations. 

Irish, an inviolable hospitality. The stranger and 
the friend, the relative and the enemy, were sa¬ 
cred within the Irish home. At all times the 
Irish have looked upon violated hospitality as 
the darkest crime. Naturally faithful to their 
obligations, and warmly attached to their friends, 
they detested what was mean, what was foul, 
what was unnational and unnatural; and as 
good works and righteousness bring peace, the 
land of Eri was a land of joy. Hence the 
Irish love of song, minstrelsy, and music. 

But when the light of revelation and the rays 
of divine grace were shed upon this naturally 
good and holy people, what a magnificent spec¬ 
tacle was presented to the eyes of angels and of 
men! The bright virtues of heavenly spirits 
were impersonated on earth-, and all Ireland, 
according to its kingdoms, and princedoms, and 
clanships, began to lead a heavenly and su¬ 
perhuman life. The purity, the justice, the 
truthfulness, the penitential spirit, the spirit of 
prayer, the love of the sacrifice "and sacraments, 
the reverence for holy things, and the deep, 
broad depths of religion in holy Ireland through 
centuries were without a parallel among nations. 
During those centuries were laid the imperishable 
foundations on which the indestructibility cf the 
Irish race ever afterwards rested. 


Characteristics of the Irish Race. 


x 35 


It would be difficult to decide whether the 
Christian Irish race has clung with greater tena¬ 
city to its religion or its nationality ; nor does it 
matter much, for both religion and nationality 
have been fellow-sufferers, and have given mutual 
aid and comfort to each other in the darkest 
hours of Ireland’s gloom. God forbid that re¬ 
ligion and nationality, as was the case with the 
Scotch nation, should ever come into collision, 
and that the bond of union which has bound 
together the Irishman’s faith and fatherland for 
generations should be sundered by any one or for 
any cause! The religious and national feelings 
of the Irish race are inseparably interwoven and 
consecrated by the alliance of ages. From their 
union has arisen the elasticity of the Irish race, 
whereby its heart can grow warm in sorrow, and 
be clothed with brightness in its gloom. There 
is a lovablcness about the Irish spirit which can 
charm even in its tribulations, as the song of the 
Irish captive can make his master shed tears. 
And to this cause can be referred the assimilating 
powers of the Celt. As fire changes into its. own 
likeness wdiatcver is cast into it, so the Celts 
transmute to their own image all foreign ele¬ 
ments. Whatever goes to Scotland is made 
Scotch, and whoever lives in Ireland becomes 
more Irish than the Irish themselves. In this 


136 Ireland among the Nations 

m 

way Celtic and Irish nationality has been pre¬ 
served despite the Dane, the Norman, the Saxon, 
and other importations. Religion, on the other 
hand, has received a majestic impetus and an 
irresistible onflow from Celtic nationality. See 
how the Irish have carried the grand old church 
over continents and oceans, and planted the cross 
of Rome from the rising to the setting sun. The 
remnants whom Cromwell left in Ireland have 
multiplied like the Jews of old, and filled the 
world with their religion and their name. Nor 
can we withhold our judgment on the Caledonian 
branch of the Celtic family. The Presbyterians 
of Scotland have marched side by side with the 
Irishman, and, having conquered their oppressors 
at home, have carried their form of Christianity 
through the wide lands of the world. Unaided 
by church organizations, and unbefriended by 
nations, the Scotico-Celtic spirit has worked its 
way by its own inborn energy. Alas! that they 
have separated from the Celtic race, and have 
been disinherited by their forefathers of the full 
truth and grace of the grand old Catholic Church ! 
Alas! that their ancient love has been turned 
unto hatred against their own brother Celts and 
against their mother, the church, who in cen¬ 
turies long past gave birth to their nation with 
pain! 


Characteristics of the Irish Race. 137 

• 

Despite the shortcomings of the Celtic race 
and the stains which ages of hatred, darkness, 
and persecution have left on it, we see no race 
whose virtues in the aggregate can outshine it. 
It is not weighed down by the torpor and stolid¬ 
ity of Asiatic nations ; it is not led away by the 
imaginativeness of the French, nor the animation 
of the Italians, which mistakes enthusiasm for 
effectiveness; it is not hampered with the mean¬ 
ness and plodding dulness of the Germans ; it is 
not stained with the cold, cruel selfishness of the 
Englishman. The Celtic race is religious and 
warlike, pure and hospitable, brave and mag¬ 
nanimous, a lover of science and adventure, 
devoted to the arts and civilization, proud in 
its antiquity, strong in its energy, defiant in 
its anger, and evidently marching on to a grand 
destiny among nations. Though there is more 
of coolness and mathematical calculation in the 
Scotch than in the Irish, amongnvhom sentimen¬ 
tality predominates to a greater degree, I shall 
show the reader in the following chapter that the 
Irish nation was nigh annihilated, and arose, as it 
were, from the dead. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


RESURRECTION OF TIIE CELTIC RACE. 

DO not wish to write of Celtic kings, 
and chiefs, and forms of government, 
because accursed is the nation whose 
trust is in its kings, and blessed is 
the nation whose hope is in itself and the Lord 
God. I do not wish to write of Celtic policy 
and the blunders of the Celts, because woe be to 
the nation that gazes with mourning on the sor¬ 
rows of the past, and sits among nations as a 
weeping Niobe. I do not wish to write of the 
triumphs of the Celts, because blindness and a 
curse are on the nation that lives on the glories 
of its forefathers. I do not wish to show that 
though the body of the Celtic race has been 
prostrate again and again, and, so to speak, de¬ 
composed in the eyes of nations, its spirit has 
been not only unconquerable and indestructible, 
but has possessed a quickening and vivifying 
power, and has, as it were, reawakened the Cel¬ 
tic nation from the dead. I wish to impart life, 
and 1 ight, and heat to that immortal Celtic 
spirit which burns in Celtic bosoms, and to fill 

138 









Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 


13 9 


and flush it with a present, practical, and living 
energy for battling its way amid the conflicts of 
nationalities in our own age. We are not, like 
the Jews (whom I call the Irish of the ancient 
dispensation), to sit down by the rivers of Baby¬ 
lon and weep, saying, “ How shall we sing the 
songs of Ireland in a foreign land ?” but we are 
to lift up our eyes and behold the flag of Ireland 
rising among ages like the sunburst of morning, 
and, though we stood on the graveyard of the 
Celtic race, send it floating onward and triumph¬ 
ant to future generations. The life of other 
races has been measured by centuries and extin¬ 
guished in feebleness and decrepitude of old 
age; but the Celtic race, after its thousands of 
years, is now strong, healthy, and youthful. 
Other races have been dwarfed in their expan¬ 
sion by climates, and by water, and by moun¬ 
tains ; but the march of the Celtic race has been 
over oceans, and continents, and zones. Other 
races have been exterminated, or submerged, or 
transfigured by fire, flood, famine, laws, pesti¬ 
lence, treachery, and the sword ; but in the roll, 
and rumble, and roar of races westward, noising 
like many waters, the indomitable spirit of the 
Celtic race was ever seen standing on the crests 
of the highest waves of that ocean with the cross 
in one hand and the sunburst in the other, and 


140 


Ireland among the Nations . 


transforming the nationalities on its way into the 
glory of its own likeness. 

Many a time was it submerged, and many a 
time did it disappear; but it was never drowned. 
There is something sad and exciting about its 
career. At one time holy but unhappy Ireland 
appears crowned with glory and clad with the 
rays of the sun, and beaming with the smiles of 
surpassing beatitude; at another, after terrific 
convulsions, she grows black, and dark, and 
shrouded with the shadows of death, and 
vanishes as a vision before the eyes of nations. 
Come with me in spirit. In the golden age of 
Ireland we stand on the sacred isle. Its rocky 
promontories trend as break-waters into a dark 
and tempestuous main, and that dark and tempest¬ 
uous main eternally murmurs round us, telling us 
that we are free. And within this ocean-river 
nature spreads out her undulating plains and 
green-robed hills, glad with vegetation, and life, 
and liberty, and cooled and beautified with in¬ 
numerable streams. The clouds of desolation 
and death rest upon the nations of Europe, and 
wars and the rumors of wars sound from afar as 
the noise of distant thunder; but the light of 
science and civilization that shone upon the isles 
of Greece and Western Asia, and the glory of 
Christianity that was bright over the hills of 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race. 141 


Rome, concentrate their rays, and smile upon our 
own happy and holy Ireland. Nations abroad 
that are in gloom see our light, and come to walk 
in our brightness and our glory, saying, “ Come, 
let us go up to the mountain of the house of the 
Lord that is elevated on the top of the moun¬ 
tains.” And at home an Arch Ollamh writes: 
“ O Erin! thy granaries are full, thy children are 
happy, thy daughters are virtuous, thy sons are 
brave, thy old men are wise, thy rulers are just, 
and thy homes are in peace.” Or, again, let 
us stand on the ocean-leaguered shore of holy 
happy Ireland, and follow in spirit the uncon¬ 
querable armies of her children as they march 
ever onward to give battle to heathenism, feroc¬ 
ity, ignorance, and savagery. Let us behold the 
venerable and patriarchal Columbkill, as he leaves 
his own loved Derry of the Oaks, and urges his 
wicker boat across the angry ocean-river that rolls 
by his new home on the cliffs and crags of unvan¬ 
quished and liberty-loving Caledonia. Shall we 

follow the Irish missionary army to Lindisfarne, 
« 

to Oxford ? Shall we see them traverse, with the 
standard of the cross, the land of Gaul, which 
more than two centuries before the fiery and 
ferocious Niall of the nine hostages swept be¬ 
neath the banner of the sunburst from the Loire 
to the Alps ? Shall we encamp with them at 


142 


Ireland among the Nations. 


Paris, at Lunueil ? Shall we march with them 
by the Rhine ? Shall we ascend with them the 
Alps to St. Gall ? Shall we descend with them 
to Lombardy, and at Bobbio pour our tears upon 
the sacred dust of the man-despising but God- 
loving Columbanus ? What, shall we visit the 
forests where the brave Arminius met the Ro¬ 
mans, to gather up the sacred remains of our mis¬ 
sionary forefathers at Ratisbon and its depen¬ 
dencies, at Kiew, at Salzburg, and in Friedland ? 
Surely of the Irish spirit it might be said that it 
was “ a vessel of election to carry Christian civili¬ 
zation before Gentiles, and kings, and the children 
of Israel.” 

Ireland’s life has been made up of very bright 
days and very dark nights. The plagues of 
Egypt did not try the soul of Pharao more 
sorely than did the sorrows and calamities of 
Ireland the spirit of the Irish race. “ Now, on a 
certain day, when the sons of God came to stand 
before the Lord, Satan also was present among 
them. And the Lord said to him: ‘ Whence 
comest thou ? ’ And he answered and said : 

‘ I have gone round about the earth, and 
walked through it.’ And the Lord said to 
him: ‘Hast thou considered my servant Ire¬ 
land, that there is none like her—a simple and 
upright nation, fearing God and avoiding evil ?' 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 


143 

And Satan, answering, said: ‘Doth Ireland fear 
God in vain? Hast thou not made a fence for 
her and all her substance round about, blessed 
the work of her hands, and her possession hath 
increased on the earth ? But put forth thy hand 
and touch all that she hath, and her bone and 
her flesh, and then thou wilt see that she will 
bless thee to thy face.’ Then the Lord said to 
Satan : ‘ All that she hath, and her bone and her 
flesh, are in thy hand. Only put not forth thy 
hand upon the life of her spirit.’ ” Then the 
vials of wrath and anger were opened and poured 
out upon Ireland, and the nations of the world 
heard the voice, as it were, of an angel flying 
through the heavens and crying: Woe, woe,' 
woe to the Irish race! The Northman, or the 
Dane, landed on the shores of unhappy Erin, 
and drank in human skulls the blood of Ireland 
for 214 years. The children of Ask and Embla, 
the Scandinavian Adam and Eve, looked to As- 
gard, the heavenly Jerusalem, and learned to 
please their gods Surtur, Odin, Asa-Thor, and 
Niord by bravery in battle and ferocity towards 
their foes. The brave Northmen drank hydro- 
mel and ate lard on the floor of Odin or the 
Valhalla in the skulls of their enemies. Alas! 
for Ireland the day these savages landed be¬ 
neath the black ravens of Odin in Ulster, and 


144 


Ireland among the Nations . 


Dublin, and Iona, and Cork, and Limerick, and 
Waterford. This was the first vial of wrath 
poured out on Ireland, and lasted from the year 
796 to the Good Friday of 1014, when the raven 
of the North was banished by Brian Boroihme. 
Again, these Northmen had seized Neustria in 
Gaul, from them called Normandy, and, under 
William the Conqueror, sealed the fate of the 
Saxons in 1066. After persecuting the Saxon 
race for 106 years, the wave of conquest ebbed 
towards the shore of Ireland once more. Alas! 
for Ireland when Strongbow and his adventurers 
landed on its southeast coast in 1169. Behold 
the second vial of wrath which was poured out 
upon Ireland, and it has continued to our day— 
that is, over seven hundred years. The separa¬ 
tion of Caledon from Erin, or the division of 
Scotia, and the disunion of Irishman and Irish¬ 
man, form the third and last vial of wrath, for 
which we exclaim: Woe, woe, woe to the Irish 
race ! 

How the eyes grow dim, and the heart sad¬ 
dens, and the head sickens, as we contemplate 
the horrors of this tortured nation bathed in 
blood ! The spear, the battle-axe, and the jave¬ 
lin of vikings were red with the blood of Ireland 
for hundreds of years. The veins of Ireland 
were scarcely full, when the sword of the Norman 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 


T 45 


knight, the bayonet of the Saxon, and the lance 
of the Englishman kept the soil of holy Ireland 
red with the blood of the Irish race for seven 
long centuries. Then the fratricidal hand of the 
Scot was turned against the Irishman, and Irish¬ 
man shed the blood of Irishman, as Cain slew his 
brother Abel. Foreign mercenaries were im¬ 
ported to complete the work of depletion, 
and Irishmen were deported to spill their 
blood in foreign lands, working out the will of 
foreign tyrant masters. Ireland was transform¬ 
ed from a land of peace to a land we might 
name haceldama. Ireland saw her sons slain, 
her old men and women slaughtered, her 
virgins murdered, her ministers mangled and 
beheaded, her infants lifted on the points of 
bayonets into the air. War, with the savage 
tramp of its iron hoof, spattered the blood of the 
Irish race over the Irish soil, and, like a deluge, 
swept away her towns, her temples, her univer¬ 
sities, her institutions, her homes, and the very 
landmarks of civilization. “ A voice was heard 
in Ireland, lamentation and great mourning: Ire¬ 
land bewailing her children, and would not be 
consoled, because they are not.” And amidst 
the woe and wailing of Ireland, the confiscation 
code was produced. The lands of sages, saints, 
and ollavites were confirmed in the names of sav- 


146 Ireland among the Nations . 

age, and unreasoning, and unmerciful strangers, 
whose deeds were celebrated by Skalds and Bri¬ 
tish chroniclers. What is a man without owner¬ 
ship ? What is a nation without a country? 
What is a race without a territory? Still more, 
this bleeding, persecuted, pauper remnant of the 
Irish race must be enslaved, enthralled, and en¬ 
chained. Twenty thousand Irish were shipped 
as slaves to islands on this continent; firms, as 
Leader & Co., were established to kidnap the un¬ 
fortunate children of old and venerable Ireland. 
Then the laws ! Misfortunes may be retrieved, 
defeats reversed, and conquests overthrown ; but 
the machinery of the law must make the calami¬ 
ties of Ireland irreversible. It must roll on, 
grinding out the remnant of the race regularly, in¬ 
cessantly, remorselessly. It must not only strike 
down the man, and the nation, and their sur¬ 
roundings, but stamp out the soul, the manhood, 
the spirit, and the nationality of the people. O 
ye laws ! strike the intellect. No Irishman shall 
henceforth be a lawyer, a physician, a clergyman ; 
no Irishman shall be eligible to place of power or 
emolument; no Irishman shall have an elective 
voice in the land of his fathers ; no Irishman 
shall have a right to educate or be educated ; no 
Irishman shall be a common mechanic. O ye 
laws ! strike the conscience. There shall be but 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race. 147 


one religion, one manner of worship, one God of 
one faction. Recreants shall be punished, and 
the conquered race, under pain of extermination, 
shall be “ civil men well affected.” O ye laws ! 
strike the morals. One Northman shall be in 
every house in Ireland, and may violate the wife, 
or daughter, or sister of the Irishman. The 
Englishman may kill the Irishman, and not be 
subject to the same tribunal. Son, betray thy 
father; daughter, betray thy mother; brother, for¬ 
get thy sister, if she be Irish. What! Good 
God ! is there more deep damnation from the 
perverted ingenuity of man ? The angel of 
Satan answers yes. Gather ye together the 
remnant of the race of Job; raise the cry, To 
hell or to Connaught with the Irish ; under pain 
of death let not the mere Irish see the ocean, or 
come within three miles of the Shannon ; there 
work ye out my laws. Commissions sat- to do 
the work in the land of our forefathers. 

I pass in spirit to hills of Connaught, and weep 
like Jeremias over the ruins of the Irish Jerusa¬ 
lem and nation— I see around me the ashes of 
my race, or hastening to this last wide Calvary. 
Hunger bloats the faces of' some, sorrows and 
tribulations bow down the frames of others. The 
mouths of some are painted green, from eating 
grass, greens, nettles, and whatever they can 


148 Ireland among the Nations . 


pluck up by the way. I look on the individual ; 
the individual cannot help the individual, and 
there is no hope. I look on the family; family 
ties are sundered, and there is no hope. I look 
on society; society is disorganized, and there is 
no hope. Where is the grand old church of Ire¬ 
land—the mother of churches, the home of learn¬ 
ing and piety, the bright light that shone over the 
western ocean ? The wilds around me answer and 
echo, She is dead . Where is Irish society, with 
its warriors, and sages, and poets, and patriots; 
with its joys, and its virtues, and hospitality? 
The wilds around me answer and echo. They 
are gone, they are dead. Where is the Irish race 
that has lived three thousand years, and never 
bent the knee to Roman, Northman, Neustrian, 
or Saxon ? The wilds around me answer, Six 
thousand yet remain. Where is the spirit of the 
Irish race ? The wilds around me, answering, 
rumble, Unconquered as the eternal hills of God y 
that spirit yet remains. 

And when I heard that noble answer, its spirit 
entered into me, and I saw a rustling among the 
dead bones of my fathers, scattered over the plains 
of holy Ireland, and they came together, and were 
tied together, and were clothed with flesh and 
skin, and the spirit of life entered into them, and 
a nation and a race were before me once more. 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race. 149 

* 

Then I thought of the elasticity of the Celtic 
nature, and how sorrow upon sorrow had been 
heaped upon its head, and yet it rose again ; it 
bore upon it the superscription of the Most High, 
and no human agency could wipe it out. There, 
too, was the inborn brightness of the Celtic mind, 
which burned whatever approached with the 
energy of fire, and transfigured it into its own 
likeness. Its likeness was stamped on nations 
during the golden era of Ireland’s history. Why 
not once more? Anyhow, the eternal spirit of 
the chainless mind shone brightest in chains, in 
slavery, and in dungeons. And there were the 
charms of the Celtic heart to captivate the mas¬ 
ter, to change hatred into love, to make the sav¬ 
age meek, the cruel merciful, the tyrant pliant. 

Now, this spontaneous and unrestricted versa¬ 
tility of the Irish spirit has been, in fact, one 
great cause of conserving the Celtic race. It 
found a solace in sorrow; it gave patience in 
adversity; it had an innate effectiveness, which 
external agencies could not destroyit was like 
the diamond or gem, which is a diamond alto¬ 
gether or in parts. Add to this the consola¬ 
tion which is felt by an individual or nation per¬ 
secuted for conscience’s sake. Consider, likewise, 
the effectiveness imparted by the love of land and 
race. These are three powers of unquestionable 


150 Ireland among the Nations . 


vitality, and manifest power of resistance. They 
have borne the Irish nation, as they have sus¬ 
tained the Jew, the Pole, the Caucasian, and the 
Greek, through many dark, calamitous centuries 
of persecution, degradation, and imminent disso¬ 
lution. And when favorable circumstances were 
added to these, as in the case of the Irish race, 
resurrection, expansion, and independence were 
natural consequences. The American Revolu¬ 
tion and the Napoleonic wars were the first 
blows to break the chains that had been clanking 
heavily on the limbs of the Irish race. The 
sword of Napoleon the Great cut asunder the 
fetters of feudal ages, and Washington, with 
sword in hand, stood by the grave of the Irish 
race, and said: “ Awake, arise, or be for ever 
fallen,” ancj at the sound of the sacred name 
of liberty, the Celts awoke to fight the prin¬ 
ciple over again, that 

/ 

./ “Tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine 
Than to sleep but a moment in chains.” 

And since that time, notwithstanding spas¬ 
modic, or ill-timed, or ill-managed, or hopeless 
attempts at the independence of Ireland, the 
most remarkable of which were ’98, ’48, and ’66, 
the resurrection of the Irish race has been 



Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 151 

accomplished, and its expansion is progressing. 
Had these attempts succeeded, the leaders would 
have been Washingtons, Jeffersons, Madisons, 
and Franklins, since success is everything in the 
eyes of the world; but even of their failure we 
can say: 


Who fears to speak of ’98 ? 

Who blushes at the name? 

When cowards mock the patriot’s fate, 

Who hangs his head for shame ? 

We blush not, for we feel the effluence of a 
national Irish spirit, wider than the boundaries 
of Ireland, which is building up, on a world-wide 
scale, a grander, nobler, and more magnificent 
Ireland. One by one the instruments of annihi¬ 
lation have been destroyed by the Irish race. 
Was Ireland divided, vanquished, decimated, 
pulverized by wars? To-day we have three Ire¬ 
lands—one in the British Islands, one in Amer¬ 
ica, one in Australia. Was Ireland confiscated ? 
To-day the Irish race holds the title-deeds of 

land ten times the area of old Ireland. Was 

\ 

Ireland oppressed by legislation? To-day the 
Irish race can control the destinies of the two 
greatest governments on the globe. Did laws 
degrade the Irish intellect, corrupt the Irish 
morals, and trample on the Irish conscience? 


152 


Ireland among the Nations. 


To-day Irish intellect is a password to power, 
preferment, and emolument the world over; 
Irish good morals an undoubted guarantee to 
confidence, and Irish conscience as free as the 
light of God’s sun or the free winds of God’s 
heavens. Was the Irish race reduced to six hun¬ 
dred thousand? To-day I would set down the 
Irish and those of Irish descent at twenty, and 
the Celtic race at thirty millions of human 
beings. And of all races who have suffered 
shipwreck, the Irish nation has lost the least. 
What is that ? I mean its language. And of 
that we can say that its loss is a financial, edu¬ 
cational, and political gain. Besides, it is not 
thoroughly dead, but, as a friend of mine, the 
late Father Mullen, wrote, 

“ Tis fading, oh ! ’tis fading, like leaves upon the trees ; 

In murmuring tones ’tis dying, like wail upon the breeze ; 

’Tis fastly disappearing, like footprints on the shore, 

Where the Barrow and the Bann and Lough Erne’s waters roar.” 

What shall we say, then? Was not the Irish 
race dead ? Has the Irish race risen from the dead ? 

4 

Was not the Irish race dead—dead by wars, con¬ 
fiscation, legislation, treachery; dead in educa¬ 
tion and arts, in religious liberty, and numbers, 
and possessions; dead ecclesiastically, politically, 
and nationally as a race ? But did not the im¬ 
mortal spirit of the Irish race by its elasticity, 


Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 153 

its inborn brightness of mind, the charms of its 
heart ; by its own spontaneous and unrestricted 
versatility, under favorable circumstances, quick¬ 
en, reanimate, reawaken, and recall the Celtic 
race to a new and glorious resurrection ? 

The Irish race was like Lazarus in the tomb ; 
it has put off the bandages of death ; let it be 
like Lazarus in life. The Irish race was like Job 
sitting on a dunghill and saying: “Let the day 
wherein I was born be turned into darkness, let a 
mist overspread it, let it be wrapped up in bitter¬ 
ness would it were like Job, at home in Ire¬ 
land, in his old age: “And the Lord blessed the 
latter days of Job more than the beginning.” 
We saw the Irish race drinking the cup of tribu¬ 
lations and of woe to the dregs ; we saw the light 
of nations turned into a dark cloud; we saw it 
like CEdipus, in the great tragedy of Sophocles, 
turned out from nations with its eyes plucked 
out and its eyeballs dripping with blood, in wail 
and lamentation— 

• 

“ Alas ! alas ! Ah me unfortunate ! 

Where in the world am I going to? 

Ah me ! oppressed with night unseen, untold, k 
Unwelcome ! ” 


It has found new homes, and friends, and des¬ 
tinies in foreign lands. The dark clouds have 


154 


Ireland among the Nations . 


been lifted from it. It still has its nationality in 
thought, in genius, in aspiration, and in the in¬ 
eradicable goodness and inexhaustible charity it 
inherits from of old. It loves the cross with the 
same love as of old: 

“ We love the glorious standard 
That gladdened Constantine, 

We love the glorious standard 
That paled the Moslem line, 

We love the sacred emblem 
The glad Heraclius held, 

We love the sacred emblem 
Clontarf long since beheld ; 

Ah ! with the joyous feelings 
Which, as the wild waves toss, 

Poured o’er the heart of Helen, 

We love the holy cross.” 

It loves the shamrock, the emblem of the Trin¬ 
ity; it loves the harp, the symbol of its music 
and its misery; it loves the wolf-dog, the type 
of its daring; it loves the sunburst, the sequel 
•of its glory; and it loves O’Neill’s and O’Don¬ 
nell’s red-war-hand, the banner of its bravery. 

What, then, do I say? I desiderate the soli¬ 
darity of the Irish race. I wish that the scattered 
sons of Erin should be banded together wherever 
found, under whatsoever government, in what¬ 
soever clime, and form a compact union of in¬ 
telligence, wealth, and patriotism. Union is 



Resurrection of the Celtic Race . 155 

« 

strength, and from strength will spring greater 
and greater expansion, and from expansion, 
under union, will issue independence and free¬ 
dom. I would like the Irish race to follow the 
example of the great German nation, which has 
been the prey of disunion for centuries, and 
whose poets and patriots have been sighing for 
solidarity for ages. They have at length at¬ 
tained it. I would thus, so to speak, Irishize 
their national war-song: 

Up swells the Bann, the Irish sea— 

Up swells the Irish wave ; 

Suir runs to battle merrily, 

And Shannon grasps the glaive. 

Liffay and Barrow tarry not, 

And Lee flows eager on ; 

All old disunion is forgot— 

The Irish race is one! 

Again, I desiderate organization. Organ¬ 
ization is not only strength, but effective and 
available strength. The study of organization, 
whether it be in church societies, or temperance 
societies, or political societies, will give the Irish 
race a knowledge they very much need. Every 
Irishman who knows nothing of organization, and 
is unwilling to be organized, is useless to his 
country. But in the hour of need, and when the 
proper time comes, and the bugle of the Irish or 


156 Ireland among the Nations . 

Celtic race is heard, organized bodies easily and 
readily coalesce. Next, I desiderate an educated 
Irish race. Education and institutions make the 
man. No educated man can be a slave. Edu¬ 
cation gives meaning and purpose to unity and 
organization. Educate the Irish race, and it shall 
be free. Lastly, through all the relations of life, 
and in all countries where my race has the right, 
I desiderate an intelligent and independent use 
of the ballot. Education and the ballot are the 
eyes of an independent commonwealth. Unity 
and organization will give an independent Ire¬ 
land ; education and the ballot will preserve its 
life and make it everlasting. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE IRISH RACE ABROAD. 

PON the wide face of the earth there 
has been no nation more attached to 
the land of its forefathers than the 
Irish. From time immemorial they 
settled on the hills and plains and by the streams 
of Erin according to chieftainries, and clanships, 
and families. They loved their localities with a 
living and passionate love, down to their farms, 
and fields, and streams’; their towns, and churches, 
and graveyards, and ruins. Migrations are un¬ 
common in the annals of Ireland, unless where 
we read of some great social convulsion, as in the 
days of Cromwell and Sarsfield. In the early 
Christian ages of Ireland ; travelling was a second 
nature of the Irish; but the Irish travellers were 
generally scholars, saints, or missionaries, intent 
upon some high social or religious purpose. At 
the beginning, however, of the present genera¬ 
tion, the united forces of famine, pestilence, exter¬ 
mination, and oppression burst asunder the bar- 







158 Ireland among the Nations, 

riers of Ireland, and sent the Celts, with drooping 
frames, and broken hearts, and blighted hopes, as 
exiles over oceans and continents. Who can tell 
the pent-up feelings of anguish, and the wild fury 
of despair, and the ineradicable feeling of ven¬ 
geance that settled on the Irish race, as it has¬ 
tened to the shore of Ireland to abandon for ever 
the hamlets of its fathers, and the chapels of its 
devotion,-and the graves of its ancestors? What 
a fiery ordeal for the aged father and the saintly 
mother, for the brave son and the noble daughter, 
to sunder the memories of home, to be severed 
from the ties of one’s native place, and to be 
borne away to a grave in an unknown and foreign 
land ! 

In the general upheaval of Irish society during 
the great exodus of our generation, a man’s 
means determined, as a rule, the length of his 
voyage. Those who had money enough went to 
Australia; those who could not go to Australia 
came to the States or to Canada; those who 
could not come to America went to England ; 
those who could not go to England went to Scot¬ 
land or Wales. Wherever they went, they carried 
with them an intense hatred for England, an 
undying love of the Catholic faith, and an imper¬ 
ishable affection for old Ireland. 

In England, Scotland, and Wales very few 



The Irish Race Abroad. 


159 


Irishmen have made independent fortunes. They 
number millions, but, with the exception of 
building up a Catholic church, which is governed 
by a number of English converts, they have made 
little impression on Britain’s national life. They 
seem to be largely indoctrinated with republican 
ideas, and to cherish sympathy with the English 
liberals. In that way they may yet be a very 
influential element, especially, in the large manu¬ 
facturing towns. 

In Canada and Australia the development of 
new countries has awakened the Irish spirit and 
given a w'holesome impetus to Irish energy. 
Unaccustomed to manufactures in the old country, 
indifferent to learning trades, and never aroused 
by incentives to labor, the Irish, for the most 
part, looked for sustenance to agriculture and 
farming. Free lands, and, as in Australia, a favora¬ 
ble climate and encouraging legislation, have 
called forth all the talent and energy of Irishmen, 
and placed them, with glorious prospects, in 
happy homes. 

The United States, however, have proved to 
be the Promised Land of the Irish race. The 
Irishman left the accursed flag of England, with 
all its stinging memories, behind him ; and, as he 
enrolled himself under the banner of Columbia, 
a heavy weight was lifted from off his soul, and 


160 Ireland among the Nations . 

his heart jumped for joy. He was born to an 
equality with the nations of the earth, and, in the 
dignity of his new nation, he felt himself a sove¬ 
reign. Instead of the miseries of his native land 
and the melancholy scenes he had left behind him, 
he saw a bright and unbounded horizon expand 
before his gladdened eyes. Since the days of the. 
Irish exodus to its present status in the United 
States, the Irish people have undergone long and 
arduous labors, untold hardships and sufferings ; 
but after many privations, calamities, and disas¬ 
ters, the night is nigh past, and the work of 
migration and settlement nigh accomplished. On 
the whole, it has been well done ; and I am glad 
to say that in religion, truthfulness, and patriot¬ 
ism the Irish-American generation is equal to its 
fathers, while in intelligence and manhood it sur¬ 
passes them. The Irish hold a grand position in 
America to-day. 

Mistakes have been made in the transplanta¬ 
tion of the Irish race ; but the Irish came without 
leaders and without friends—a vast multitude of 
impoverished and uneducated exiles in a foreign 
land. Their notions of government schools in 
the old country did not allow them to avail them¬ 
selves of the educational system to its full extent 
in the new land; and the great want of spiritual 
directors in this wide country left them in an 


The Irish Race A bwad. 161 

unintelligible and most perplexing dilemma. The 
Irish, of course, through a want of knowledge, 
made a great mistake in not directing their atten¬ 
tion to real estate. And this evil was aggravated 
by the paradoxical tenacity with which large 
agricultural populations settled down in and 
clung to large cities. Nor were the Irish bene¬ 
fited by their directors. At an early stage of 
emigration, when they were without the clergy, 
their traditional and natural leaders, they were 
taken hold of by the politicians. Whom in the 
world have politicians benefited ? When or where 
were they not selfish and corrupt? How have 
they benefited, or rather how have they not 
degraded, the Irish race in America? The schools 
of the politicians have been the liquor-saloons; 
and, alas! who can tell the infamy, sorrows, 
demoralization, destitution, and degradation 
which noble-hearted Irishmen have garnered, as 
fatal fruits, in those lycea of national death ? 
The Irish national press of America, instead of 
leading, was led by, the fatal current, and encour¬ 
aged political partisanship to the detriment of 
intellectual independence. Things are changed 
now, and it is unnecessary to speak of what is 
known to all. Nor shall I find fault with the 
Irish race where I find so much to praise ; because 
the whole body is lovely and beautiful, and its 


162 


Ireland among the Nations . 


freckles are scarcely perceptible. Besides the 
influences just mentioned, there is another far 
more powerful—the Catholic Church, whose for¬ 
mative elements in the United States I shall 
enquire into in the next chapter. 


v 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


TIIE FORMATIVE ELEMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC 
CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 

DO not purpose to write of the organ¬ 
ism of the Catholic Church in the 
United States, nor of the worthy liv¬ 
ing prelates by whom it is governed, 
nor of its temporal standing or social and politi¬ 
cal relations. I shall rather state the active 
causes in the mental training of the United 
States Catholic Church, and the formative ele¬ 
ments of its theological life. As the clergy is 
the teaching body of the laity, and the episco¬ 
pacy moulds the clergy to its own likeness, I 
shall confine my attention to the deceased pre¬ 
lates of the Union, who, in future time., are 
destined to be reverenced as the fathers of 
the American Church. Their lives have been 
written by Mr. Clarke, and are published by 
Mr. O’Shea. Though there is a sameness in 
his description of characters, and an evident 
fear of entering into a critical examination of 
the dead, because they were bishops, though 
Mr. Clarke wants the power of individualizing 

163 








164 Ireland among the Nations . 


characters, and is defective in the faculty of in¬ 
vestigation and communication ; and though he 
seems to be somewhat biassed towards South¬ 
ern bishops, his book is a useful collection of 
episcopal memoirs, and will repay perusal. 

Young in years, but bold in energy, the Catho¬ 
lic Church has grown to be a power in the United 
States, and one of the most flourishing national 
churches in communion with the Holy See. It 
is a matter of deep interest to Americans, and 
especially to Irish-Americans, how the Catholic 
Church has grown so rapidly in this country, 
from what elements it has been moulded, and 
how it has attained its present form in thought 
and structure. 

When the empire of the sea and the hegemony 
of Europe passed from the countries by the Tagus 
and the Danube to the lands of the Thames and 
the Seine, a new philosophy, new discoveries, new 
enterprise, and a new spirit of progress were given 
to the human race. After a long and doubtful 
contest between the descendants of the Normans 
and the Franks, a line was pretty clearly marked, 
whereby France was master on the Continent, and 
in its armies, civilization, and energy held the 
leadership of continental European nations. But 
England became mistress of the ocean, first in 
wealth, first in navy, first in colonies, and first 


The Formative Elements. 


165 


in transoceanic and transcontinental influences. 
Since the days of the Roman Empire, no nation 
welded so many millions of distinct nationalities 
together, and, though they differed in language, 
religion, and national aspirations, held them to¬ 
gether beneath the same sceptre with a firmer 
grasp, than did the English people. The mind 
of France seemed to have grasped and nigh 
gained the North American continent, vast as it 
was. Two waves of French settlers rolled along 
the banks of the two great arteries of North 
America—the Mississippi and St. Lawrence—till 
they met in the vast prairie-lands of the North¬ 
west. These settlers imported and planted on 
the banks of those streams and their feeders 
the names, the religion, the institutions, and the 
memories of Mother France. But the mastery 
of the sea gave the hegemony to England among 
European nations on the North American conti¬ 
nent. The English language, English laws, Eng¬ 
lish religion, and English authority were estab¬ 
lished on this soil, and the fond hope of France 
was dispelled. The religious influences of the 
early French settlers seem to have alone sur¬ 
vived the disappearance of French authority. 
Three causes have concurred to contribute to 
this fact—first, the raising up and establishment 
of the United States as the asylum of the world; 


# 

166 Ireland among the Nations. 


next, tne French Revolution, and ostracism of 
the French Roman Catholic clergy; next, the 
political and religious disabilities, and the conse¬ 
quent exodus, of the Celtic race in Ireland. A 
traditional friendship between the French and 
Irish nations, and a common religion, served to 
keep alive memories and institutions which were 
introduced by the early French settlers, and were 
destined to disappear, were it not for the influx 
of the Irish race. In her long life of tribulation 
and persecution Ireland became the pupil and 
protegee of France. Thus, it seems to me, arose 
on this continent a Franco-Irish-American hie¬ 
rarchy. Of the deceased prelates in the United 
States Catholic Church sixteen were born in Ire¬ 
land—Concannen, Egan, Connolly, Kelly, Eng¬ 
land, Conwell, Kenrick, Clancy, Hughes, Quarter, 
Byrne, O’Reilly, Gartland, Smith, Barry, Barron ; 
sixteen in France—Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, 
Marechal, David, Dubois, Portier, Brute, Blanc, 
Loras, Odin, Blazin, Cretin, Junker, Lavialle, 
Janson; thirteen in the States—Carroll, Neale, 
Fenwick, Fenwick, Eccleston, Myles, Clanche, 
Tyler, Reynolds, Fitzpatrick, Timon, Carroll, 
Young. Then, Lefevre, Vandevelde, and 
Neckere came from Flanders, Baraga from 
Illyrium, Rosati from Italy, Luers and Neu- 


The Formative Elements. 


167 


mann from Germany, Moreno from Mexico, 
and Whitfield from England. 

Within the last century the Irish race built up 
seven hierarchies: one in Ireland, one in Britain, 
one in America, one in Canada, one in the Cape 
of Good Hope, one in India, one in Australasia. 
In speaking of building up a hierarchy in Ire¬ 
land, we do not refer to the hierarchy of the 
ancient Irish church, nor to the controversy 
relative to apostolic succession in Elizabethan 
or Marian bishops ; but we assume for granted 
the Irish hierarchy, priesthood and people, were 
decimated in ages of persecution, and had to be 
reconstructed. We do not speak of desecrated 
temples rebuilt, or confiscated cathedrals re¬ 
placed ; but we mean the moral and mental 
style of rebuilding the hierarchical edifice. Be¬ 
fore the foundation and endowment of May- 
nooth, the moulding of Irish ecclesiastics was 
marked with a foreign brand. The Irish colleges 
at Paris, Rome, Louvain, Salamanca, and Coim¬ 
bra, together with houses of religious orders in 
foreign countries and a few home institutions, 
such as those of Carlow, Kilkenny, and Tralee, 
were the sources whence Ireland was supplied 
with her hierarchy. Coming from foreign coun¬ 
tries, and trained under different influences, the 
sympathies of the Irish clergy varied much; but 


168 Ireland among the Nations . 

a common faith and common feelings of persecu¬ 
tion attempered them to a common sympathy 
and inseparable union. The French ideas and 
customs prevailed. Delahogue in the infancy of 
Maynooth, and Maynooth training and teaching, 
afterwards made the Irish clergy Gallican rather 
than ultramontane. This was felt in all the 
offshoots of the Irish Church. Dr. O’Reilly, now 
a Jesuit, and Cardinal Cullen have in a great 
measure succeeded in modelling the Irish Church 
on the idea of the Italian, and especially the Ro¬ 
man, rather than the French. The harmonizing of 
the Gallican hierarchy, in France itself, with Rome 
has had a wonderful influence in the same direc¬ 
tion. In England and Scotland the accession of 
learning, wealth, and influence to the Roman 
Catholic Church has given tone to the episcopacy, 
irrespective and, it might be said, in spite of an 
Irish priesthood and Irish congregations. The 
British Roman Catholic episcopacy, though it 
represents Irish constituencies, is aristocratic in 
principle, ultramontane in doctrine, and marked 
by a rigid High-Church inflexibility. Being led 
by neophytes, it has a tendency to push the 
divine too far into the human element of the 
church, and, having left what it considers the 
bondage of change, it is in danger of setting up 
the mutable as unchangeable. The Irish hierar- 


The Formative Elements . 


169 


chy as led by Cardinal Cullen, and the British 
hierarchy as led by Wiseman, agree in being 
thoroughly ultramontane; but Cardinal Cullen 
would stand on the toes of Ireland to suit Rome, 
whereas Wiseman would inconvenience Rome 
to convert England. Cardinal Cullen, however, 
loves the Irish people after Rome; whereas Man¬ 
ning respects and Wiseman loved British aris¬ 
tocratic ideas, privileged orders, and social alien¬ 
ations. Of course, the body of Roman Catholics 
in Australasia are Irish or of Irish descent, but 
they may thank the influence of Cardinal Cullen 
at Rome that Cardinal Wiseman did not com¬ 
mission to them a body of high-toned, aristo¬ 
cracy-loving, newly consecrated English con¬ 
verts. In East India the influence of the Por¬ 
tuguese court recalled the Irish hierarchy, and 
left East Indian Catholics with promises unre¬ 
deemed, hopes unfulfilled, and hierarchy lost. 
The powerful influence of Cardinal Cullen at 
Rome has placed the nucleus of an Irish hier¬ 
archy in Southern Africa. In fact, his power at 
Rome seems to have been co-extensive with the 
confines of the British Empire, and to his credit 
be it said that he has sent Irishmen throughout 
the world to Irishmen. 

Now, let us leave Europe, Asia, Africa, and 

Oceanica, and direct our attention to North 


170 Ireland among the Nations. 


America. It is impossible to deny that the 
Roman Catholic Church is tinged in its human 
element with the genius of the nation and race 
where it may exist. The triumph of the States 
in the war of the Revolution gave birth to an 
American national spirit, which has been growing 
towards the fulness of manhood down to our 
day. Canada, either through fear, or want of 
pluck, or apathy, held on to foreign rule and 
influences as a child at a mother’s apron, and 
is still in the nursery. Whether it be the spirit 
of the country, or the genius of nationality, or 
the work of grace, it is certain that the Roman 
Catholic Church has more than kept pace with 
the giant strides of the United States, and has 
far outrun her Canadian sister. Though the ele¬ 
ments of colonization, the favors of secular au¬ 
thority, and the tide of events seem to have been 
on the side of the Canadian Catholic Church, she 
looks dwarfish and insignificant side by side with 
that of the United States. Of all the hierarchies 
which have been founded or are sustained by the 
scattered Celtic race, that of the United States is 
the most important and imposing. On this side 
of the ocean, and, in fact, outside of Europe, 
there is nothing in communion with the Roman 
See like the Catholic Church of the United States. 
And already this young giant of the western 


The Formative Elements . 


171- 

world has entered the lists with national churches 
whose age is counted by centuries to the decades 
of its own life. It stands foremost among the 
offshoots of the Saxon, or Latin, or Celtic races. 
Outstripping the land of Montezuma and the 
spiritual offspring of Portugal on the South 
American continent, it is greater than the Church 
of St. Patrick or the Church of St. Augustine, 
and looks Franc#, and Italy, and Austria, and 
Spain face to face, with higher hopes, more 
peaceful prospects, and brighter destiny. In 
mind it is peculiar, in convictions inflexible, and 
in luck, pluck, and perseverance foremost. It 
somehow breathes and is quickened by the mat¬ 
ter-of-fact, everyday go-aheadism of the United 
States. Its faith partakes more of the rational 
than of the blind, and its actions are led more by 
the necessities of the hour and circumstances 
than by reference to the usages of dead forms 
of society. The Catholic Church among the 
Latin races round about the Mediterranean Sea 
seems to love the synthetic discipline of Mongo¬ 
lian nations; the Catholic Church among Celtic 
and Teutonic nations is leavened with the spirit 
of modern analysis ; the Catholic Church in the 
United States inclines to theories of eclecticism. 
I do not speak of what Roman Catholics hold as 
the divine element of Catholicism; but in the 


172 


Ireland among the Nations . 


human element we notice among the Latin races 
a hankering after the old Roman constitution, 
with its emperors, and prefects, and praetors; 
among the Germans and Celts, a tendency to¬ 
wards franchise and election; among Americans, 
a love of what is best, wheresoever found. 

Which are the nations that have contributed 
to build up the church in the United States? 
As to numbers, it is founded on Ireland ; as to 
thought, it is founded on France; as to action 
and policy, it is founded on America. To every 
one it is evident that the sweat, devotion, and 
dollars of the Irish have built up the churches, 
institutions, and religious homes of the Union ; 
but as the religious mind of Ireland was de¬ 
veloped and directed by that of France through 
the infancy and early years of the youth of the 
American Church, the mind of France migrated 
to America by two lines—indirectly through Ire¬ 
land, and directly from France. But when that 
mind, either unalloyed from France or colored in 
its flow through a Celtic channel, reached Amer¬ 
ica, and mingled with the mind of America, it 
was further modified. Bishop Brut6, in our.judg¬ 
ment, is the best representative of the religious 
mind of America in its original form; Bishop 
England, of that mind with its Celtic tinge; Bish¬ 
op Carroll, of the same with its American color 


The Formative Elements. 


173 


ing; Bishop Hughes was a living embodiment 
of the excellences of the three. The three were 
men of great learning, of genuine and unaffected 
piety, of indefatigable and insurmountable zeal 
and prudence. Bishop Brutd.was an ardent lover 
of th z grande nation , Bishop England was a fiery 
friend of Ireland, and Bishop Carroll was a Re¬ 
volutionary Washingtonian patriot. But Bishop 
Brute’s conduct was regulated by the rules of 
ecclesiasticism, Bishop England’s by the daring 
and aggressive spirit of his race, Bishop Carroll’s 
by the sagacity of his nation and the wisdom 
of his renowned order. In intellect we must 
drop Bishop Carroll, and substitute his successor, 
Bishop Spalding. Then, the light from Bishop 
Brute’s mind was always constant and pleasing, 
that from England’s bright and at times dazzling, 
that from Spalding’s artificial and not repulsive. 
Whoever gazed at Brute’s mind saw the moon in 
a clear sky; whoever saw the soul of England 
beheld the sun at noon-day; Spalding’s mind 
was a hall brilliantly lit up. But what was Arch¬ 
bishop Hughes? What Archbishop Kenrick? 
Kenrick was a man of learning; Hughes a man 
of learning and action. As far as Kenrick 
was a teacher, and as far as Hughes was a 
legislator, they may be called fathers of the 
American Church. After all, Hughes is the great 


174 Ireland among the Nations. 

man. When England disappeared in the south¬ 
ern heavens, Hughes rose like the polar star in 
the northern sky, to remain evermore as the ever- 
visible angel of the American Church. He was 
an England in intellect, energy, and patriotism ; 
a Carroll in Americanism ; and a Brut6 in learning 
and Catholicity. He should be looked up to by 
American Catholics as the great man who first 
brought their church from obscurity to mid-day 
light in this country, and founded it upon the 
rock of justice, truth, and humanity, as moulded, 
according to American institutions, by the Amer¬ 
ican mind. 

Such are the great men among the American 
deceased prelates. As to piety we judge not. 
They have stood before the judgment-seat of a 
higher tribunal. We stand upon their graves, 
and wish their spirits peace. They witnessed 
days of trial and sectarian bitterness that tried 
the souls of men; they were respected by all 
nationalities, creeds, and political parties. Of 
the system which they founded we merely say 
that they planted and left the cultivation to 
their successors. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE AMERICAN. 

HERE has scarcely been a nation in 
the history of the world which has in 
so short a time developed so marked 
and unmistakable nationality as the 
people of the United States. It is Asiatic in 
its conceptions of the grand and the great, while 
it is European in its practical, empirical life. 
Thither has been gathered the aggregate of all 
national excellences. The laws of eclecticism, 
which made old Rome the mountain-power of 
antiquity, are working with a fivefold force in 
this country, untrammelled by the debasing and 
degrading influences of caste, slavery, and des¬ 
potism. In the whole records of the human race 
the manhood of the individual has made the 
manhood of the nation, the liberty and energy 
of the individual have communicated vitality, 
force, and independence to the race; and in no 
country of which there are extant documents do 
we find a nobler, freer, and more magnificent des¬ 
tiny for a man or a race. 








176 Ireland among the Nations. 


The United States is a great menagery of na¬ 
tions and races; a great battle-field in the peace¬ 
ful ways of life, where power, preference, and 
fame are the common property of all, without 
distinction of race, creed, or country. The orig¬ 
inal element of this country is sadly following 
the sun in its course to bury the bones of its 
remnants on the shores of the Pacific. The 
founders of this nation, though they have re¬ 
tained the common law, and in a great measure 
the institutions, of Britain, have come from Sco- 
tico-Celtic origin, and leavened the whole mass 
with its distinguishing characteristics. The 
shrewdness, the versatility, the quickness, the 
mathematical accuracy, the thriftiness, the tena¬ 
ciousness, and the ingenuity of the Scotchman 
and North-of-Ireland man, are eminently con¬ 
spicuous in the Yankee; but he in no wise mani¬ 
fests the gruffness and haughtiness of the Eng¬ 
lishman, though he surpasses him in candor, gene¬ 
rosity, and truthfulness. 

There are here, besides, two great races—the 
German and the Irish. As far as the American 
is concerned, the Irishman has certainly the ad¬ 
vantage. New England is fast becoming Hi¬ 
bernian, whereas the Teutonic element, being 
excluded down East, is founding its homes in 
the far West. Even in the West the pioneer is 


The American . 


177 


generally an American or Irishman, but the Ger¬ 
man follows at a safe distance, and, to give all 
parties full due, manages to hold his position 
very well by means of parsimony, self-abnega¬ 
tion, and cunning. There is a great future in 
America before the Irish and the Germans. The 
Germans may seem to prevail because the Irish 
are more quickly absorbed in the great repub- ' 
lican population and marked as a race princi¬ 
pally by their religion. Their religion, however, 
does not count for a straw with the American 
mind, and their success or failure will depend on 
their temperance, uprightness, industry, and pa¬ 
triotism. There is a deep debt of gratitude in 
the American mind for the many lives which the 
Irish race has sacrificed to establish this country, 
to maintain it in its wars, and especially for the 
oceans of blood it has poured out to preserve 
this Union. I cannot close this chapter with 
more instructive remarks than I find in the ser¬ 
mon of an eminent, tried, and patriotic Catholic 
priest on the surrender of Lee. As time rolls 
on, .they will be justified more and more. .He 
said : 

“ I wish to-day to say a few words to you, and 
through you to the people of the United States, 
and also a few words of myself. 


178 Ireland among the Nations. 


“ It is the evidence of noble natures to look 
calmly at events, and to act dispassionately and 
justly at all times and in all circumstances. The 
victors and the vanquished may equally manifest 
the power of intelligence and reason and the 
beauty of heroic virtue—the one by submitting 
to the inevitable without servility, and'bearing 
up against disaster without despondence, and the 
other by acting justly and without violence, and 
using their advantages only for the general good. 
I have every confidence in the intelligence, prac¬ 
tical common sense, and great goodness of the 
American people ; and the reason why I have 
this confidence, in which I shall not be disap¬ 
pointed, is, that they have pitched aside the old 
theories of peoples and nations, and have adopted 
broader, nobler, and juster views of the rights and 
duties of mankind. 

“ Guided by these views, they will not act 
wrongly nor unjustly toward any portion of their 
own people, nor towards mankind in general, and 
the world at large will come to respect them and 
fear to inflict injury upon them. The nation, as 
well as the individual, will be despised or hated 
that has not a just respect for the rights of others, 
as well as a proper regard for its own rights. I 
will even say that it cannot have a proper regard 
for its own rights, if it has not a just respect for 


The American. 


1 79 


the rights of others. You ought to reflect and 
ask yourselves why it is that some people are 
despised, and their rights not respected as they 
ought to be. It is, I assure you, a very interest¬ 
ing, and for you an important, question. May it 
not be that you have not manifested among man¬ 
kind a proper regard for your own rights, because 
you had not a just respect for the rights of others ? 
But let that dark and disagreeable problem disap¬ 
pear before the light of to-day’s vision. I see to¬ 
day the greatest future for America that any peo¬ 
ple ever dreamed of, because the rights and lib¬ 
erty of all are now firmly secured throughout its 
wide domain, and its influence and example must 
sooner or later cause the triple curse of mankind, 
slavery, caste, and aristocracy, to disappear from 
the earth. Ignorance and prejudice, the child of 
ignorance, have brought innumerable woes upon 
mankind. But they and a long train of legalized 
oppression must disappear before the spread of 
intelligence. The greatest enemy mankind has 
or ever has had is ignorance. From it are begot¬ 
ten prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, persecution, 
and tyranny, and the innumerable woes of want 
and suffering. 

“ There is still a large class in the world in¬ 
stinctively pursuing the way of suppressing know¬ 
ledge, because they are selfishly interested in 


i8o Ireland among the Nations . 

maintaining their own supremacy by the igno¬ 
rance and degradation of the masses. ‘ The 
slave must be kept ignorant, because the security 
of the master requires it/ is still the motto of a 
larger number than is supposed. There are 
thousands who, though they dare not avow them¬ 
selves the enemies of intelligence, yet fear it, and 
are its deadly enemies. But in future the convic¬ 
tion that a high order of intelligence is necessary 
to know one’s own rights and the means for pre¬ 
serving them, as well as to feel one’s own wants 
and wrongs, and to select the means of supplying 
and redressing them, will spread and become 
irresistible. 

“ That state must be founded on a wrong 
basis and governed by vicious principles which 
fears intelligence, and practically insists on the 
ignorance of the people as necessary for its exist¬ 
ence. It builds camps and barracks instead of 
school-houses. It takes pride in what it ought to 
be ashamed of, and is ashamed and afraid of 
what ought to be its noblest pride. It provides 
well-trained officers for standing armies, and 
makes the toiling millions pay for them, whilst 
they are left without well-educated schoolmasters 
to supply that intelligence which would ulti¬ 
mately relieve them from their oppression and 
poverty. And that religion also must have a 


The A meric an. 181 

wrong idea of God, as well as of man, which 
dreads intelligence, or regards it as inimical to 
God’s government or the best interests of man. 
Selfishness and the love of domination must have 
taken firm possession of any religion which con¬ 
siders ignorance necessary for the interest of 
either God or man. God is intelligence and.the 
author of it, and ignorance that can and ought 
to be removed should be considered a crime by 
religion. Can it be possible that the ministers of 
the Christian religion have forgotten that the 
author of Christianity never made a promise to 
ignorance, except to teach and enlighten it, whilst 
he has made many promises to nearly every kind 
of human infirmity? And now I beseech you to 
love liberty and to love intelligence, and try to 
extend these blessings to every member of .the 
human family. Hate tyranny, oppression, wrong, 
and slavery, but above all hate ignorance, the 
fruitful parent of wrong to the human family. 

“ Now, a word with regard to myself. I believe 
there is a providence of God respecting these 
United States, which is to me very striking and 
special. This with me is such a strong convic¬ 
tion that, like faith, it has guided me firm and un¬ 
wavering during the storms and trials of the past. 
During the last four years, I found that friends 
became cold and unkind, and acquaintances 


182 


Ireland among the Nations . 


reserved, and some of them even bitter, towards 
me. People made fun at my expense, and even 
called me hard names in my presence. Their 
peculiar Christianity baptized me with such epi¬ 
thets as Black Republican and Miscegenationist, 
because I believed that a man ought to own him¬ 
self, and ought to have a wife and family without 
the permission of a master. 

“ I bore it all, if not with the patience of a 
saint, at least with the indifference of a stoic. I 
knew that I was right, and that those who differ 
from me would be converted, if not by grace, at 
least by the progress of the age. I felt that igno¬ 
rance and prejudice could not last for ever ; I knew 
that the hard logic of events would break through 
the thickest skull, and convince those who would 
be deaf to truth, reason, and the pleadings of the 
finest feelings of our nature. 

“ I was right in all my calculations. I find now 
that all are coming up to where I stood years ago, 
without claiming any foresight except what truth 
and honesty give. I have predicted pretty clearly 
nearly all that has happened, even to the failure 
of parties and organizations, and I gave the rea¬ 
sons why they would fail. 

“ And now, after years of struggle and sore trial, 
you cannot imagine the sweet pleasure and the 
full, calm satisfaction that I have lately enjoyed. 


The American . 


183 

Oh! to feel that I had been true when the trusted 
failed ; to be conscious that I had been friendly in 
the hour of trial, when the worth of a friend can 
only be appreciated ; to know that I have been 
faithful when friends betrayed ; to feel that, amidst 
the ruin of plighted faith and the wreck of brok¬ 
en oaths, I remained undaunted, unshaken, and 
sincerely loyal, is a happiness worth possessing, 
and for which a man should toil. 

“ And now, having gone through an ordeal 
which I did not seek nor desire, but which was 
forced upon us, and which tried our manhood and 
our worth, I pray God that I may never be sub¬ 
jected to such another trial. If, however, the 
selfishness and injustice of man should ever again 
force us to battle for truth, right, and justice, and 
the best interests of mankind, I feel that my loy¬ 
alty in the future would be what it has been in 
the past. I know that, if I proved traitor, I could 
not respect myself, nor could I hold up my head 
like a man before the tribunal of the Author 
and Judge of all right, truth, and justice. It is a 
great mistake to suppose that loyalty to the su¬ 
pernatural is all that is required of us, and that 
we may with impunity trample upon natural right 

and justice. ..... It is 

pleasant to know that liberty is the right of all 
men, and it is useful to know that it will ever find 


184 Ireland among the Nations . 

true friends and brave defenders among all races, 
as well as cowardly traitors and bitter foes among 
all nations and all religions. And now, if we have 
done well in the past, let us be calm and consider¬ 
ate, and let us cherish no desire to harm any 
human being. If we have acted badly, let us be 
sorry, and resolve to do better for the future, and 
then there will be well-grounded hope for the 
church as well as for the state, and for the indi¬ 
vidual as well as for mankind.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 


MERE is something vague and pagan 
about the word destiny; but the 
workings of Providence, by a kind of 
necessity, seem to hold up high and 
grand aims before the United States, which par 
excellence we call America. There are other na¬ 
tions in America, such as Brazil and Canada, to 
which nature has given boundless territory, vast 
water facilities, and incalculable natural re¬ 
sources ; but, by some inexplicable fatality, Provi¬ 
dence has not stamped their names with that 
mysterious word, destiny. By a regular, un¬ 
abated progression, the mind of this country is 
marching to an undefined greatness, and its mate¬ 
rial power and wealth are expanding with an 
infinite development, and the population is multi¬ 
plying with an undiminished increase in the fulfil¬ 
ment of its destiny. Other nations, witnessing the 
surpassing growth and the rising facilities of ex¬ 
pansion in the United States, are somehow drawn 
unconsciously into an acknowledgment of destiny, 
and are captivated by that of this country. 








i86 


Ireland among the Nations . 


It is impossible for any one to obtain a true 
idea of the vastness of this country by reading ; 
one must travel through the United States 
to have a living knowledge of its greatness, 
to feel its boundless amplitude. The features 
of our country are not marred with vast oceans 
of sand like those of Africa, nor with barren 
and uninhabitable plateaus like those of Asia, 
nor with ice-bound rivers, snow-covered steppes, 
and bleak Arctic wastes like those of Siberia and 
Canada, but its surface stretches along the line of 
the temperate zone, and throughout the length 
and breadth of its mighty domain is laid out by 
the hand of nature for cities, towns, highways, 
railways, and the habitation of man. The river 
system of the United States imparts to it a living 
energy and quickens its animation, just as the 
healthy pulse of blood in circulation through 
human arteries invigorates the human frame. Its 
vast plains and enormously grand mountains con¬ 
tain inexhaustible supplies of coal and endless 
stores of mineral wealth. The engineer finds 
ample scope for his most sublime conceptions, 
and the wildest dreams of surveyors are more 
than realized in the grand realities of the United 
States. Year by year Territories grow into States, 
before whose power, wealth, and extent the glo¬ 
ries of the conquered provinces of Rome, Persia, 


The Destiny of America. 187 

and Babylonia are cast into the shade. And over 
these vast realms nature has spread with lavish 
luxuriance all varieties of soil, vegetation, and 
produce, and all diversities of climate, from the 
bracing cold of the North to the sunny influences 
of the South, and from the varying thermometer 
of the Atlantic coast to the equable temperature 
of the Pacific seaboard. 

Washed by oceans and bounded by zones, 
America holds the central and commanding posi¬ 
tion of the world. It is connected with Europe 
by innumerable ties of blood, of race, of national¬ 
ity, of language, of institutions, and of historic 
traditions. It is not fettered with the chain-ball 
of prejudice, nor narrowed to the pathways of 
any nation. Its long eastern coast-line confronts 
the western coast-lines of the three.continents of 
the Old World, and the magnificent shores of 
California and Oregon are spread out before the 
nations of the Orient, face to face. The four 
winds of heaven waft the outcast and the op¬ 
pressed from all the nationalities of the world to 
its hospitable shores. America is the home and 
asylum of the human race, the promised land of 
the wanderer, the stronghold of the persecuted, 
the resting-place and fatherland of the exile. 
Here there is solace for the broken-hearted 
patriot, there is food for the hungry, there is 


188 


Ireland among the Nations- 


labor for the idle, there is education for the 
ignorant, there is security from the tyrant, there 
is toleration from persecution, there is wealth for 
the industrious, there is hope for the downcast, 
and there is preferment for the worthy. The 
eyes of the world are turned toward America, for 
she has become the mistress of two oceans and 
the resting-place in the grand highway of the 
transoceanic, transcontinental route between the 
nations of Europe and the vast lands of Poly¬ 
nesia and Eastern Asia with its multitudinous 
millions. To Europe America sends her lessons 
of peace, humanity, and toleration, and on Asia 
she reflects the light of our age, and race, and 
civilization. Is not this destiny? 

One of the grandest ideas interwoven with 
American destiny is the cosmopolitan character 
with which its institutions are impregnated. 
Had America been shackled with the narrow 
notions of European nationality, had she been 
manacled with the caste doctrines of Asia, had 
she been encumbered with the weight of an 
established church, or had she been bandaged 
with the political, social, national, or religious 
prejudices of the Old World, she would never 
have manifested the healthy, vigorous, consistent, 
and gigantic development to which one century 
of national life has given birth. And as time 


189 


The Destiny of America. 


rolls on, it is her destiny to influence more and more 
the destinies of other nations. Hence we do not 
marvel that sects have endeavored to graft their 
religious tenets in her Constitution ; but the 
genius of the American nation, which accords a 
hearing and liberty to all religions, which is 
opposed to intoleration, and will never permit 
persecution, has always excluded and will never 
sanction such a consummation. 

There are two, and only two, constitutions 
which can harmoniously move side by side in this 
country—the constitution of the Catholic Church 
and the Constitution of the United States. They 
lie parallel, like the rails on a track, and over 
them the American nationality can travel with 
train speed. Neither was made for nationality, 
race, or language ; each spreads its broad aegis 
over all nationalities, races, and languages. 
There is no human being, no matter from what 
clime, no matter by what oppression he may 
have been overladen, no matter what his ante¬ 
cedents, who may not enter the broad door of 
the Catholic temple and the wide gates of Ame¬ 
rican nationality with full and unquestioned 
rights to participate in their spiritual and tempo¬ 
ral treasures. Before the laws of the United 
States and before the altar of the Catholic 
Church there is genuine republican democracy and 


190 Ireland among the Nations. 

perfect equality of the human family without 
distinction of race, language, nation, government, 
class, or caste. The same cosmopolitan aspira¬ 
tions, the same high and noble conceptions of the 
human race, the same sublime disregard of per¬ 
sons, the same solicitude for the outcast and op¬ 
pressed, the same holy and unswerving resolve to 
elevate, and ennoble, and civilize the human 
race, permeate the doctrines of the Catholic 
Church and the laws of the United States. Is 
there no kind of destiny in this ? 

Anyhow, the Irish race is bound up with the 
destiny of America, and, like a tributary of a great 
river, is rolled along with it in its course. The 
destiny of the Irish race is also interwoven with • 
that of the Catholic Church, and has grown out 
of it as a branch from the trunk of a tree. Thus 
the Irish race is a connecting link between the 
great church of ages and the great and rising 
nation of the world. Could anything be higher 
or more momentous than this twofold destiny of 
Ireland, than this twofold mission of the Irish 
race? Rejoicing in the grandeur of her destiny, 
America marches on to be the great nation of the 
future. Sustained by the power and promises of 
her Founder, the Catholic Church will remain as 
the church of ages. The success or failure—that 
is, the destiny—of the Irish race will depend on 


The Destiny of America. 


I 9 I 

its intelligence, education, and moral worth. 
The destiny of the Catholic Church is divinely 
guaranteed, and all human circumstances seem 
to foreshadow a grand and unparalleled destiny 
for the. United States 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


EDUCATION AMONG RACES. 

F all the ages from the foundation of 
the world to our day, the ages of 
Pericles in Greece, of Augustus in 
Rome, and of Louis XIV. in France, 
are marked as the ages of civilization. Whether 
the nineteenth century, with its inventions, its 
progress, its open and unrelaxed efforts in the 
path of development, is to be numbered as a co¬ 
equal with those mentioned, must be left to the 
arbitrament of generations that are to come. 
One thing is certain, that its success or failure, 
its superiority or inferiority, depends on educa¬ 
tion. What is education? In all the depart¬ 
ments of life, let the knowledge be empirical or 
inductive; in all the phases of society, let the 
truths be of a religious or political complexion, 
education holds a common, unquestionable, and 
direct sway. The term education is co-extensive 
with the term knowledge. Is knowledge the off¬ 
spring of experiments through the senses ? It is 
subject to education. Is knowledge the result 
of truths stamped by the Creator on the mind 

iga 



* 





Education among Races. 193 

at its creation, inborn in the mind, but not of the 
mind ? It is subject to education. Is knowledge 
a light from on high, foreshadowed, to be sure, 
by the light of reason, but unseen and untouch¬ 
ed, whether by observation or development ? It 
is subject .to education. In religion and politics, 
in science and arts, in business and life, education 
displays an unquestionable energy and vitality. 
Though education is not strictly an art, it deals 
with all subjects that are known by the name of 
art; though education is not purely a science, 
within its domain are all branches of knowledge 
to which the word science can be applied. In 
fact, education may be styled the art of arts and 
the science of sciences. 

Now, as man differs from man, so nation differs 
from nation. There is such a thing as a national 
will, a national intellect, a national memory, and 
a national imagination. Hence there is such a 
thing as a national education. Is there not a 
national memory ? Is there not in the Irish na¬ 
tion the memory of its wrongs, and of its sorrows, 
and ot its tribulations through hundreds and 
hundreds oi years ? Is there not a national in¬ 
tellect and judgment? Did not the judgment of 
the French nation call the First Napoleon to 
the imperial purple, and did not the judgment of 
the same Fren'ch nation set aside the Third 


£94 


Ireland among the Nations. 


Napoleon ? Is there not a national imagination ? 
Have not the Cossack and the Slave been dream¬ 
ing of universal empire for ages ? Is there not a 
national will?. Did not the people of the North, 
at incredible loss of money and of blood, pre¬ 
serve the life of the Union? But as with in¬ 
dividuals, so with nations. In some the memory, 
in some the intellect, in some the will, in some the 
imagination, preponderates. The Italian is re¬ 
markable for memory. This is seen in the impro- 
visatori . The laws and educational system of 
Italy for over a thousand years tend to the same 
result. You can find Italian contadini able to 
explain the Theodosian Code and unable to 
write or even to read. They learn by means of 
lectures, sermons, conversationi, and the like. 
Italy is no less remarkable for its voluminous 
writers—in history, canon law, theology, biogra¬ 
phy, and subjects of the same class—than it is 
for its poets, painters, sculptors, and archi¬ 
tects. Italy is emphatically the land of memory 
and imagination. Its laws, its institutions, its 
customs, and its methods of education have, 
through over a thousand years, developed the 
memory and imagination rather than the judg¬ 
ment and the will. This may explain the ex¬ 
clamation of Byron : 


Education among Races. 


*95 


“Italia, O Italia! thou who hast 
The fatal gift of beauty, which became 
A funeral dower of present woes and past, 

On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, 

And annals graved in characters of flame.” 

And again: 

“O Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! 

The orphan’s heart must turn to thee, 

Lone mother of dead empires ! 

• • « • • e • 

The Niobe of nations, there she stands, 

Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe.” 

The Teutonic race, whether German or Saxon, 
is as decidedly marked by the prevalence of judg¬ 
ment and will as the Italian is by that of the 
memory and imagination. Hence the German 
race is cold, stolid, obstinate, and inflexible. It 
has been studying the leading minds of ancient 
Greece and Rome for centuries in its many uni¬ 
versities, colleges, and schools. Its scholars are 
critical rather than imaginative, and imitative 
rather than original. Even when original, there 
is a haze of mysticism and metaphysical obscurity 
overshadowing their most prized and beautiful 
productions. They overabound in the faculty of 
investigation, and are wanting in the faculty of 
communication. The Germans are a patient and 
persevering people, and have long been the prey 
of disunion and the tools of petty princes. It 


196 Ireland among the Nations . 


may be the cold, leaden lethargy of their litera* 
ture will be relieved and inspired by an animus 
and national afflatus, now that the German can 
sing— 

Up swells the Belt, the Baltic sea— 

Up swells the German wave ; 

Elbe runs to battle merrily, 

And Oder grasps the glaive ; 

Neckar and Weser tarry not, 

And Main flows eager on : 

All old disunion is forgot— 

The German race is one ! 

What shall we say of the French, that impul¬ 
sive, mercurial, and restless nation, which is ever 
pulsating as the waves of the sea? The Franks 
appear to have retained some of the characteris¬ 
tics of their forefathers beyond the Rhine, which 
have been in part eliminated and deeply colored 
with the traits of the Latin races. The French 
mind loves order, symmetry, numbers, is noted for 
quickness and general correctness of judgment, 
while it is behind the Italian mind in works of 
imagery and memory. There is a variety and 
versatility about the French mind that reminds 
one of the ring, and swell and change of the 
Homeric hexameter. The Italian mind is gener¬ 
ally opened and educated by the study of logic, 
history, and religion. The Teutonic mind is de¬ 
veloped and polished by studying the beauties of 


Education among Races. 197 

ancient classic writers. The French mind usually 
opens to the idea of order and numbers. It de¬ 
lights in figures and symmetry, and one can find 
the idea of order underlying even its works of 
passion and imagination. But before these races 
settled down in Europe, and manifested a de¬ 
veloped national mind, before the Italians saw the 
Tiber and the Po, before the Teutons saw the 
Oder, and the Rhine, and the Thames, before 
the Franks beheld the Rhone and the Loire, a 
wave of the human family passed westward, and 
poured over the ocean-girded lands of Caledon 
and Ireland. The face of its mind is marked and 
peculiar. Why? Because it bears on it the 
types from which later races seem to have taken 
their distinguishing traits. In one wing of the 
Celtic race—the Caledonian—there is the judg¬ 
ment and will of the Teuton ; in the other—the 
Hibernian—there is the memory and imaginative¬ 
ness of the Italian ; while the characteristics of 
the French mind abound in both wings. There is 
to-day a surprising power of modification, of imi¬ 
tation, and of adaptability in the descendants of 
the Celtic race. There is no people who can 
change with so much ease in so short a time, and 
follow such varied avocations. In works of the 
judgment, of the memory, of the imagination, 
the genius of the Celtic race is a rival of the 


198 Ireland among Ike Nations. 

proud genius of Greece or the master-minds of 
Rome. Coeval with the genius of Israel or the 
disciples of Zoroaster, the Celtic genius still lives 
in its youth, and is replete with energy and 
vitality. 

And now, let us cast a glance at education and 
civilization marching down the unreturning cen¬ 
turies of the past. Born in distant ages, in the 
lands of the East, the queen of wisdom and civi¬ 
lization established her empire by the banks of 
the Nile and the Euphrates. As generations pass¬ 
ed away, civilization marched towards the set¬ 
ting sun. In the isles and on the mainland of 
Greece she reached the zenith of her glory. The 
mind of Greece has animated, inspirited, and 
directed the brains of the human race. The 
Homer of Greece is the Homer of to-day; the 
Demosthenes of Greece is the Demosthenes of 
to-day; and the great Stagirite and the divine 
Plato run down through time with undiminished 
lustre. Greece shines among the civilized nations 
of the past as the sun amid the heavenly bodies. 
But when the glory of Greece paled away, and 
the liberty of that enlightened land went down 
before the iron and remorseless tramp of Roman 
legions, and the trophies of her proud cities were 
drawn in triumph up the capitol, civilization set 
her throne on the seven hills by the Tiber. 


Education among Races. 199 

Thence she shed her light over the nations of the 
Western world. The Italian, the Teuton, the 
Frank, and the Celt received enlightenment from a 
new Rome that arose on the ruins of the old. 
Drinking at the fountains of the mighty minds of 
Greece and Rome, and illumined by a brighter 
and more resplendent light from on high, and 
animated by the spirit of liberty, they went forth 
to win more unfading laurels than either Greek 
or Roman, and to found a civilization that was to 
last for ever. The effeminate people of Asia 
bowed before the new lords of the human race, 
the ignorant sons of Africa fled to deserts and 
forests, and the enlightened and educated nations 
of Western Europe have remained masters and 
dictators of the nations. Yea, more ! in the march 
of education and civilization, matter has been 
subjected to mind, space has been almost annihi¬ 
lated, fire and water, and air and earth, have be¬ 
come subject to man, new and subtle fluids have 
been discovered and utilized, and the world be¬ 
holds to-day an education, an enlightenment, a 
liberty, and an elevation unknown to the haughty 
ones of Greece or Rome. 

1 

Let us turn once more our eyes on this our 
common country. Nature has spread out our 
vast prairie-lands like the surface of the ocean, 
and rolls through them our mighty rivers with 


200 


Ireland among the Nations . 


force greater than the flow of the Atlantic by the 
Pillars of Hercules, or the roll of the Mediterra¬ 
nean Sea through the Bosporus, and has lifted 
up our mountains miles beyond the thrones of the 
Olympian gods. The expansions of our rivers 
compete in area with the surface of the central 
sea. Our States are greater in size and in wealth 
than the dependencies of haughty Rome. Hither 
has come what is excellent, what is great, what 
is ennobling in the education and civilization of 
Italy, of Germany and England, of France and 
Ireland, and Spain and Scotland. Under a free 
and unconquerable banner, wealth, power, and pre¬ 
ferment are open to all. This is an amphitheatre 
for the championship of all nations. Here there 
- is no prejudice, no inequality, except what is born 
of mind, morals, and muscle; no tyrant to tread 
down the poor man. We welcome among us the 
importers of the excellences of all nations. We 
delight in the eclectic system. Already our rail¬ 
roads bind the continent from ocean to ocean ; 
over the broad surface of our land are universities, 
colleges, high-schools, institutes, lecture-halls, and 
all the means and guarantees for the diffusion of 
light, and learning, and knowledge, from the 
shores of Maine to the Golden Horn, from the 
Lakes to the Gulf. May we yet see the concen¬ 
trated glories of our parent countries shine.over 


Education among Races. 


201 


this new and virgin land, this young and mighty 
nation, radiant with hope in the morning of her 
days, and impregnated with the greatness of her 
destiny! May we see American Tassos, and 
Ariostos, and Dantes, and Metastasios ; Raphaels, 
and Michael Angelos, and Brabantes ; Baroniuses 
and Cantus, the rivals of the Italians; Schillers, 
and Goethes, and Leibnitzs, and Rosenmullers, 
Miltons, and Shakespeares, and Newtons, the 
equals of the Teutons ; Bossuets, and Rousseaus, 
and Noels, the brothers of the Franks ; Burkes, and 
Currans, and Grattans, Moores, Wattses, Scotts, 
and Burnses, to reflect in this new world the 
glories of the old Celtic race. Men of Ireland, 
proud sons of proud Scotia, remember the glories 
of your ancestors, and the high and momentous 
destiny that awaits you here on this continent, 
where all nations are contending for the foremost 
rank ! True to the instincts and traditions of the 
past, faithful to the laws and institutions of this 
country, kind to each other, and encouraging to 
all, press forward in the battle of life to the goal 
of victory. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


COMPARATIVE SURVEY OF NATIONS—BROTHER¬ 
HOOD OF RACES. 

HE spirit of travel, the spirit of curios¬ 
ity, and the spirit of enquiry are very 
closely allied, and are found side by 
side with the love of self-preserva¬ 
tion, the love of selfiperpetuation, the love of 
truth, and the love of power. The desire to 
know ourselves leads to a wish to know the 
beings that are like ourselves, and hence there 
is a natural tendency which is gratified by ethno¬ 
logical investigations, and intensifies the spirit of 
enquiry through all researches on humankind. 
It is pleasing to travel in spirit over the broad 
and unfailing empire of the human family, and 
to examine the strange things of distant or for¬ 
gotten laces, and to enquire into the causes 
which have regulated national life; but it is 
more pleasing in connection with mankind to 
develop the spilit of philanthropy, humanity, 
and biotherhood; to trace the handiwork of God 
through ages and nations; to be guided by the 

203 








Comparative Survey of Nations. 203 


light of the face of the Lord, which unfailingly 
shines on the soul of man ; and to recognize as 
one s brother the image of God, without inter¬ 
posing the barriers of creed, caste, class, ages, 
languages, nationality, or government. And in 
travelling over the field of investigation which 
we have chosen, we might have remarked that 
the light of God, though it might have been 
obscured, was never changed into utter darkness, 
and, though human nature might have been cor¬ 
rupted, the glory of the human heart was never 
extinguished. Where the nobility of man was 
degraded, and the aspirations of the human soul 
were smothered, the work of ruin and desolation 
on the human spirit came not from the Father 
of benevolence on high, with whom is every 
good and perfect gift, but was executed by the 
hands of man, and was conceived by individuals 
or races in a spirit of despotism, selfishness, or 
inhumanity. 

We have been in spirit among nations away 
back in history and in the far-distant lands of 
Western Asia, and we saw that the degradation 
of the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and the Persian 
arose from the tyranny and heartless cruelty of 
inhuman rulers; that with all their savagery, the 
Scythians were the brain-seeds of European 
nations; and that with all their stubbornness and 


204 


Ireland among the Nations . 


hard-heartedness, the Jews were the custodians of 
revealed truth for the human race. The bright 
electric light of Grecian culture and intelligence, 
and the rays of Roman common sense, which 
shone like a luminary, were obscured by the black 
spots of slavery, rapacity, idolatry, and inhuman¬ 
ity. The noble valor of the ancient Teuton and 
the blunt, honest Saxon was stained by his cold¬ 
blooded cruelty; the sublime sacrifice of the 
Mohammedan Arab was tarnished by his fatalism 
and slavish subjection ; and the Northman’s super¬ 
human valor and utter disregard of life were 
buried and forgotten in the dark grave of his in¬ 
human practices and fiendish revenge. The refine¬ 
ment and intelligence of Byzantium were melted 
away in the emollient indolence and enervating 
sensualism of Asiatic customs, and the noble aspi¬ 
rations of the mediaeval Italian republics were 
stifled in the widespread chaos of a rising society. 
And in modern times the fairest features of 
nations are marred with the unsightly scars of 
selfishness, greed, despotism, cruelty, and in¬ 
justice. Germany, through her history from the 
days of the Teutonic knights and the time of 
Brandenburg, has been branded with the foul 
mark of despotic feudalism. The Italians have 
been stained with endless anarchy and intrigue; 
the English have been blackened with selfishness, 


Comparative Survey of Nations 205 


greed, and cruelty ; and Spain has been a land of 
blood, black deeds, and treachery. With all their 
vagaries and whimsicalities, the idea of principle 
shines above all the shortcomings of the French ; 
and though they have been an endless source of 
disarrangement to the pendulum which regulates 
the balance of power in Europe, their restlessness 
has detracted very little from their nobility of 
character and sublime devotion to the doctrine 
of principle. Other nationalities outside the 
great Cossack Empire have been wafted to and 
fro by the stronger currents of the European 
races just mentioned ; and when we turn our eyes 
on modern Asia, we find there are dark recesses 
among its hundreds of millions of population 
where scarce a ray ever enters of the light which 
is reflected in the pages of the Zend Avesta, the 
Vedas, the Koran, or the writings of Confucius 
and Lao-tse. Those dark, dark recesses are the 
homes almost exclusively of the female sex. In 
arid, impenetrable, and inhospitable Africa, the 
openings for God’s light to the soul of man are 
like the vistas in the black forests of its darkest 
jungles. Away in distant Polynesia, the silence 
of the cannibal conscience is like the still, dead 
calm of the great ocean around his coral islands. 

But with all the weaknesses of the human heart 
and aberrations of the human mind, we find the 


206 Ireland among the Natio 7 ts. 

fires of human conscience evermore smoldering, 
and the instincts of nature bursting forth, and 
hopes and feelings whose tendencies, like cer¬ 
tain gaseous fluids, are ever upwards. Where we 
find failings, we should condone ; and where we 
find excellences, we should praise. I confess that 
I turn with pride from a comparative survey of 
nations to the dear old Celtic race, that I can admire 
it in its Druidical simplicity and sublimity, and 
that I can love it in its pure Christian beauty and 
brightness. I confess that the hands of Ireland 
have been stained with the blood of its brothers, 
and have likewise worked foul deeds under the 
dictation of foreign masters; but the soul of Ire¬ 
land was ever open to grace and brotherhood, 
and the heart of Ireland was ever susceptible of 
the highest instincts of justice and humanity, and 
the intellect of Ireland ever shone like a lumin¬ 
ary when reflecting the light ©f civilization and 
Christianity. I can mourn with Ireland in her 
sorrows and tribulations; I can grow angry with 
her in her feelings of vengeance ; I can weep with 
her amid her ruins and desolations; I can rise 
with her from the abyss of despair, hope with her 
in her hopes, joy with her in her joys, glory with 
her in her glories, and love with her in the univer¬ 
sal and inexhaustible charity of her brotherhood. 

And now, gentle reader, I shall bid you fare- 


Comparative Survey of Nations. 207 

well. We have made a long voyage through ages, 
and we have performed a tedious journey, ac¬ 
companied with many investigations, through the 
nations of the earth round about the globe. If 
I have been just to my race and my kind; if I 
have treated all nations with the judgment of 
truth and the feelings of brotherhood, and if you 
give testimony that it has been my desire to bear 
witness to truth, justice, intelligence, religion, and 
humanity; then, kind companion, before we part, 
I shall constitute you heir to the results of my 
investigations, namely: 

That (a) all races under the sun have excel¬ 
lences ; 

That ( b ) their defects are for the most part 
ascribable to circumstances and causes beyond 
their control; 

That ( c ) the Celtic race, though it has its defects, 
is inferior to no other in its excellences; 

That (d) having singular advantages in America, 
it will rise to a higher standard ; 

That (e) the eclecticism, freedom, education, 
and destiny of America converge to make it the 
most outshining political structure which man¬ 
kind has ever seen; 

That (/) the brotherhood of races is fully 
recognized in this country and the Catholic 
Church ; 


2 o 8 Ireland among the Nations. 


That (g) the combined influences of the 
republican system in the United States, and of 
the Christian republic in the Catholic Church, 
give independence to individuals and races, truth 
and enlightenment to human minds, goodness 
and grace to human wills, and elevation, refine¬ 
ment, and manhood to the human spirit and 
character. 




SKETCHES 


OF 



BY 


COL. JAMES E. McGEE. 

l2mo, Extra Cloth, Gold and Ink Designs, 342 pages. Price $1. 


T HE author of this highly interesting and instructive volume, who, 
having himself served for several years in the late Irish Brigade, 
in the service of the Union, is therefore practically conversant with 
battles, soldiers, and military tactics and strategy, amongst other 
things, says in his preface : 

“When we consider that, from the surrender of Limerick till the 
era of the French Revolution, three-quarters of a million of adults of 
Irish birth served in the armies and navies of Europe alone ; that 
they were to be found fighting under every flag on the Continent, 
according as their inclination or family ties led them to the choice of 
a home; that they were, even under the same government, divided 
: into various brigades, regiments, parts of regiments, and independent 
commands ; that their officers, forced from their native soil by perse¬ 
cution and proscriptive laws, were men whose fortunes lay in their , 
swords, and their advancement depended neither on court favor nor 
social influence, but on their individual capacity and conduct in 
actual warfare, we can form some estimate of what a mass of facts, 
dates, episodes, and anecdotes an author would have to collate and 
| examine who aimed at publishing all the gallant deeds performed 
i by Irishmen, even for two or three generations. 

“ My object was less ambitious, for I desired only to portray a 
few of these noble actions—to cull, as it were, some flowers from the 
immortal garlands with which modern history has enwreathed the brow 
i of Irish valor, and, by presenting them in a well-assorted bouquet, to 
show to the world, in miniature form, what grateful tributes have 
I been offered to the exiled and long-suffering children of the land in 
| which I had the honor of being born. 

“While selecting prominent characters, and incidentally touching 
on the relation of important battles, I have endeavored also to pre¬ 
serve as much as possible a chronological sequence, so that those 


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